Quaker Parents Were Ahead of Their Time

Yahoo

03-04-2025

One morning in 1991, I prayed with the fervor that only a tween can muster for one thing above all others: cold Diet Mountain Dew. But all of the cans in my mom's stash were warm. So I tossed one in the freezer, forgot about it, and hours later retrieved the frozen-solid mass. Then I decided to pop it in the microwave. You can imagine what ensued.
After extinguishing the flames, my mom asked us kids what we thought had happened. I stepped forward as if approaching the gallows—and she lavished me with praise. For telling the truth. For taking responsibility. Her response might seem surprising, but we're Quakers, and avoiding judgment is pretty on-brand.
From where I stand now, I can see that her decision to use positive reinforcement aligns with research on motivating kids, something I've become quite familiar with as a journalist covering parenting and education. Still, for years, I didn't recognize the connection between my faith and the child-development studies I frequently combed through at work. Then, when the coronavirus pandemic temporarily left our public school without enough adults to meet my son's needs, we switched him to a Quaker school. The school is organized around an acronym I'd never heard before—SPICES—that stands for principles I know well: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality, and stewardship. Those aren't the only pillars of Quakerism, but they're big ones, and seeing them all together got me thinking. Sitting in the meetinghouse one Sunday morning, after nearly an hour of silent worship, I had a Queen's Gambit moment. Whereas the chess champ saw pawns moving across a phantom board, I saw each child-rearing best practice I'd been writing about line up with a principle of Quakerism.
The Religious Society of Friends—'Quaker' being a derogatory term, reclaimed—is a hard faith to explain, because it tries to eschew dogma. It's now possible to be a Muslim Quaker or a Hindu one, or to not believe in any god at all. That said, Quakers all over the world tend to talk about the same principles and take part in some of the same practices. For example, in place of rules, Quakers publish 'advices and queries,' which prompt individuals to make good, considered choices. Attendees of Quaker meetings near me were recently asked to ponder: 'Do I make my home a place of friendliness, joy, and peace, where residents and visitors feel God's presence?' The children's version read: 'In what ways am I kind to people in my home?' Certain expectations underlie these questions—that one should try to be kind, for example—but so do curiosity and an openness to differing answers.
As it turns out, leading with questions is a great way for parents to talk to children. Encouraging kids to come up with their own solutions grants them autonomy. And as Emily Edlynn, a psychologist and the author of Autonomy-Supportive Parenting, told me, kids who feel like they have control over their life experience better emotional health, including less depression and anxiety. Fostering kids' autonomy has also been tied to children building stronger self-regulation skills, doing better in school, and navigating social situations more effectively. Best of all, once kids get used to the self-discipline that comes with exercising autonomy, it can become habitual. Give your kids agency in one area, and they tend to 'develop internal motivation even for things that they do not want to do,' Edlynn said, 'because they're integrating the understanding of the 'why' those things are so important.'
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It can be scary to trust children with independence. But kids are better problem-solvers than some people might think. When my son, at age 10, asked me if he could play laser tag with friends, I asked him how he could avoid pulling a trigger (in deference to the Quaker value of pacifism). He decided to serve as referee. I was proud of him for exercising 'discernment,' another Quaker value, all on his own, for listening to his 'still, small voice within' and letting it guide him to a solution that satisfied his need for belonging. He is now 13 and recently couldn't decide whether to accept a babysitting job or relax at home. I asked him, 'What do you think tomorrow-you will wish today-you had done?' He picked out stuffed animals to give his charges, spent the evening feeling needed, and had cash the next day when he wanted to buy boba for a friend.
Obviously, real damage could come from giving kids complete autonomy, and Quakerism recognizes this. Early Quaker epistles inveigh against permissiveness, and a 1939 text, Children & Quakerism, quotes William Penn, the Quaker who founded Pennsylvania, saying, 'If God give you children, love them with wisdom, correct them with affection.' In other words, pacifism doesn't mean that parents can't set boundaries. As a 1967 book about Quaker education, Friends and Their Children, put it, 'There is a difference in principle between setting an army on the march and carrying a tired and hysterical child up to bed.' So when my son used to leave toys out, I wouldn't clean up for him. I'd prompt him to do so: 'I see blocks still sitting on the floor.' That was usually enough. When it wasn't, I would stage a mini sit-in, and we wouldn't go on with our evening until the blocks were put away—the type of consequence that's crucial for raising considerate kids. If he hollered, I would 'bear witness' to his suffering and 'be with' him, silent but unwavering.
In addition to sit-ins, both civic and domestic, Quakers have a tradition known as 'spiritual gifts.' That involves treating individual talents as assets that belong to the community and ought to be developed in ourselves and encouraged in others. For parents, this means focusing on what our children choose to do, are good at, and enjoy. You can't ignore your kids' weaknesses—but you can spend less energy on them. For my youngest's terrible handwriting, that meant aiming for legibility and saving the time that could have gone toward cursive lessons for activities that animate her, such as building boats and airplanes from the contents of the recycling bin. Research backs up this approach. According to Lea Waters, a psychology professor at the University of Melbourne and the author of The Strength Switch, focusing on children's strengths 'has been shown to increase self-esteem, build resilience, decrease stress, and make kids more healthy, happy, and engaged in school.'
But perhaps the most important element of Quaker parenting is the edict to 'let your life speak.' In practice, that looks like apologizing to your kids freely, saying please and thank you, and, yes, trying not to shout at them. It means acting in accordance with your values, such as when my grandma took me to pack toothbrushes and soap into 'kits for Kosovo,' and when my kids make PB&Js for our unhoused neighbors or bring games to a family shelter. The idea, supported by common sense and reams of research, is that kids develop empathy by living it alongside their caregivers. What's more, another study establishes that knowing that their parents value kindness above achievement protects kids' well-being.
Infused in all of these practices is the conviction that children are not lesser proto-adults, but fellow beings worthy of respect and agency regardless of their behavior. The closest that Quakers come to dogma is the belief, first expressed by the religion's founder, that there is 'that of God' in every person, children very much included. That's why, as Friends and Their Children notes, Quakers try to make children feel 'welcome at the very centre of life'—a concept quite similar to the 'unconditional positive regard' that psychologists today know leads to secure kids. Children who feel valued in this way, and who believe that what they do adds value, generally come to understand that they matter. And a sense of mattering makes kids more likely to be happy, resilient, academically high-achieving, and satisfied with their life, as well as less likely to struggle with perfectionism or addiction, Gordon Flett, the author of the American Psychological Association's Mattering as a Core Need in Children and Adolescents, told me.
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So here I am, nearly 375 years after Quakerism's founding, asking my kids questions, giving them bounded autonomy, and nudging them to invest in their strengths and be stewards of their community—all while communicating that their worth is in no way contingent. Put together, these Quaker practices result in a parenting style considered ideal by psychologists: authoritative parenting. As Judith Smetana, a University of Rochester psychology professor whose work focuses on parent-adolescent interactions, explained to me, authoritative parenting is characterized by the effort to warmly and responsively set limits, and to support kids rather than punish them harshly when they overstep those limits.
Some people might argue that Quaker parents aren't doing anything special. What is free-range parenting if not oodles of agency? When Quaker parents try to stay calm and acknowledge their kids' feelings when they act out, aren't we just doing what the so-called Millennial parenting whisperer Dr. Becky recommends? In telling my teenage son that I see the packaging from his graphing calculator lying on the table rather than in the trash, am I not just following 'Say What You See' coaching?
But pop parenting philosophies can be unhelpful, especially because parents not infrequently misinterpret them. Take gentle parenting. At its best, it encourages parents to give kids the respect and empathy they need to thrive. But gentle parenting, at least as it's presented in Instagram reels, can result in children doing as they please. 'What it really leaves out,' Smetana told me, 'is the importance of structure and being clear about where the boundaries are.' Many parents are left feeling helpless—a common experience among pop-parenting adherents. In the aughts, a friend of mine tried attachment parenting, an approach centered on enhancing the bond between mother and child with, among other practices, maximum physical proximity. She ended up feeling like a failure each time she put her baby down to use the restroom.
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For new parents, sorting through the good and bad of each of these schools of thought can feel not just bewildering, but impossible. 'These terms come and go so quickly,' Smetana told me, 'and fads in the popular audience don't intersect very well, necessarily, with the research.' It's taken me more than 15 years, during which I've read hundreds of parenting books and academic papers, to piece together which bits of each philosophy are relevant to me. According to Smetana, even authoritative parenting can be of limited use for caregivers, because its advice is so broad. There are lots of ways to be an authoritative parent, which can leave moms and dads (but mostly moms) feeling rudderless.
That's where Quaker parenting has stepped in for me, providing a simple way to separate the wheat from the child-development chaff. It gives me plenty to cling to, but its guiding principles are also flexible enough to allow leeway. This isn't to say the religion is perfect. Its past is filled with failures. Many Quakers worked to abolish slavery, but many did not; some were themselves enslavers. The Society of Friends was the first religion to officially condemn that horror, but some meetinghouses—which are known for having benches arranged in egalitarian formations—featured segregated seating for Black members. Quakers also participated in forced assimilation of Indigenous peoples, including boarding schools that stripped children of dignity, culture, and health. Although not exclusively white, Quaker membership in the U.S. is still predominantly so.
But even in these shortcomings lies an essential Quaker parenting lesson. We favor queries over strictures because of a concept known as 'continuing revelation,' or the idea that we cannot know all there is to know, and we will always later realize that we were wrong. The principle has helped me cultivate humility and compassion for myself after missteps. Because there can be no one best way in Quaker parenting, I'm freed from feeling like every detail of every decision will lead only to perfect success or abject defeat.
Looking back at the Diet Mountain Dew incident, I bet my mom wanted to rail at me. She'd warned again and again that metal in the microwave would spark. But Quaker values urged restraint then, just as they did decades later, when two of my daughters enrolled at schools with grade portals. With just four clicks, I can see how many points they've missed on each test and which assignments they haven't turned in. Snowplow parenting tells me to lean into snooping and send emails to their teachers requesting retakes and extensions. It's sorely tempting. But Quaker principles remind me not just about the value of autonomy, but also that kids need stillness and peace of mind, that pestering them isn't likely to lead to the 'nonviolent communications' that improve connection, and that the goal is for teens to develop a purpose-based identity rather than a performance-based one. So I resist the urge to monitor and intervene—just as research on anxiety suggests I should.
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Article originally published at The Atlantic