Raising Each Other’s Children

“A Quaker Meeting […] is a fine place [in which] to bring up children when families do many things together – worship, play, and share the ups and downs of life. There was a group of about six families in our Meeting that shared so much that in a sense we all raised each other’s children and to this day we are one huge extended family, traveling any distance to be together for special life events like the next generation’s marriages.”

— Elise Boulding, 1975
Born Remembering

 

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Today’s Invitation

Did you have “family friends” growing up? Write a note to one of them, living or dead. Let them know they are important to you.

If not, write a note to an adult who was important to you as a child (a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a coach, a neighbor).

Query of the Week

Who belongs in Quaker community?

How does the intentional lack of a creed make belonging easier? Harder?

Author

  • Maeve Sutherland

    Maeve Sutherland is a communications professional who never recovered from her wonderful childhood at a Quaker elementary school. She has spent her career helping nonprofits share their stories, from schools and universities, to museums, to radio stations. As a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, Maeve spent a year living in “Peaceable Kingdoms,” pacifist intentional communities around the world, where she learned that everyone has a role to play in shaping a better world. She worked as a freelance social media manager before joining Thee Quaker Project. After returning to Quakerism as a young adult, Maeve now attends Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting in Philadelphia.

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