Memorandum on Children at the Houses

TO ALL HOUSES MEM/1999/08

CHILDREN AT THE HOUSES

1. Two houses have asked for a children's programme. The stewardship

declines to make one and does not expect to be asked again on the

same grounds.

2. Children are at the houses constantly and are welcome. They eat at

the table, they are noisy in the long room, and they are looked after

by the people who brought them.

3. No child is a member. There is no junior standing, no roll of

children, no entry, and no record kept of a child by name.

4. No child is given a reading, asked to keep the silence, taught the

marks, or told what the Practice is for. A child who asks is answered

truthfully and briefly and is not followed up.

5. A person who grew up around a house and who later wishes to take part

comes to an Open Table, as any adult does. Nothing is carried over.

No house is to treat this as a return, a homecoming, or a matter of

any interest whatever.

6. Nobody is to be described, in speech or in writing, as having been

born into the Practice, raised in it, or brought up in the houses.

The phrase is inaccurate and the inaccuracy is the objection.

7. Where a house's public work involves other people's children, that

work is governed by the law of the place and by the policy of the

partner body. It is not governed by anything of ours, and every parent

is told so in writing before the work begins.

8. The stewardship's reason is short. An organisation that enters

children acquires an interest in what they grow into. We do not want

that interest and we are not able to hold it honestly.