Parenting: were Quakers ahead of their time?

The nearly 375-year-old religion’s principles line up surprisingly well with modern parenting research

Excerpt: "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."