Why doesn't California trust parents?

.... Thoughts on AB 1955.

Reprising Jack Nicholson’s character in 1992’s A Few Good Men, California Governor Gavin Newsom did a fine Hollywood impression last week of Col. Nathan Jessup’s defiant line: “You can’t handle the truth!”  Newsom may have been merely “acting” for the benefit of his political base, but the recipients of his angry message were real California families and parents with children in public schools.

Newsom signed into law AB 1955, intended to keep California parents in the dark to gender identity issues their children may experience in the state’s public schools.  The measure escalates the state’s ongoing demonization of parents.  For the past decade, the California Department of Education has encouraged school districts to hide from parents that a child has adopted a different gender identity at school lest the child suffer “harassment” at home.  Last fall, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued a district whose policies encouraged school administrators to share such changes with parents and guardians.  “Outing” the child to family could “compromise the student’s safety” by “increasing the student’s vulnerability to harassment, violence, or other forms of abuse at school or at home,” the state’s filings allege.

While California is the first state to adopt a law barring schools from notifying parents if a child changes his or her gender identity at school, its bureaucrats are not alone in pushing the idea that parental notification results in child abuse.  Last fall, New Jersey’s Attorney General sued a district to block a local school board policy encouraging parental notification, arguing that doing so would endanger students with unsupportive families.

Why do bureaucrats not trust parents on this issue?  Educational polices regularly require notification to parents when children are being bullied, are at risk of suicide, or have a significant illness or injury.  These policies surrounding gender identity issues are the exception rather than the rule.  Is there research demonstrating a clear causal link between parental notification and child abuse? 

Advocates for gender-diverse children insist there’s a link, pointing to surveys and studies showing that trans youth are overrepresented in foster care, juvenile detention, and homeless shelters and have high rates of suicidal ideation.  Children and youth who identify as transgender are more likely to have a history of mental illness or autism and to have suffered child abuse or neglect.  But determining cause and effect is not easy, and there’s no evidence demonstrating that “coming out” to a parent significantly increases a child’s risk of abuse or self-harm.  In fact, the evidence is to the contrary:  In Britain, a government-commissioned report just concluded that the health service’s banning of puberty blockers for children has not resulted in increased suicides.  And as a recent study on the link between parental rejection and suicidal ideation among transgender youth noted, research on the causes of increased suicide risk among these youth “is still in its infancy.” 

Without some demonstrated evidence that notifying a parent of a child’s desire to change gender identity will result in harm, how can schools justify not telling a parent?  How healthy is it for a child to have one gender identity, name, and set of pronouns at school and another at home?  Leading such a double life is bound to create intense psychological strain for the youth.  While a child may fear a parent’s reaction, how else can the parent and child work through any negative reactions to build the type of supportive relationship that advocates say is critical for these gender-diverse youth to thrive? Is the hope simply that the child will never tell the parent and will lead this double life until he or she graduates and moves away?  Is the best solution really to sever the parent-child relationship, depriving both of its proven, life-long benefits?

Those of us who are parents of young adults know how it is to have difficult conversations with our teenagers.  We often have expectations for them that don’t turn out the way we hoped.  We tend to fill them with our own dreams; finding that they are forging a different path can be disappointing.  Sometimes the path they’ve chosen makes us anxious and scared for them, and we let our own insecurities get the best of us.  But those parent-child conflicts ease over time as we recalibrate and renew our relationship with a young adult who means the world to us. 

In the end, it’s unlikely that this law will stand.  Parents have the fundamental right to raise their children, and the State cannot withhold critical information from them absent clear evidence that the information will place the child in imminent danger of abuse.  Most most educators truly care about children and will use their First Amendment rights to let parents know when there’s an issue.  Newsom’s a politician, and he’s playing on a stage for votes.  But parents are, in the words of Tom Cruise’s character, entitled to answers.  They can handle the truth.

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In other news:

• Just a few weeks after a federal court eased oversight of facilities for unaccompanied migrant children, the Justice Department has alleged that a major child shelter provider, Southwest Key, ignored and covered up ongoing and severe sexual abuse of children at its facilities. Despite current and past allegations of wrongdoing by the company, the federal government has, since 2007, paid the organization over $6 billion.

• It seems New Mexico’s child welfare agency opened an office of children’s rights to address the concerns of children in care. That office’s employees tried to do what they were asked to do. Now the child welfare agency is upset they actually did their job and wants them to stop doing it. Nothing to see here, move along.

• How on earth does a CPS worker steal $1.8 million from the agency?

• North Carolina is launching an $11 million “Intensive Alternative Family Treatment” Program for families whose children have significant behavioral complexities and needs.

• West Virginia’s foster care population has reached its lowest level in several years.

• Rebecca Lindstrom continues her excellent series on child abuse pediatrics.