adam zivo: 'parental rights' should protect progressive parenting, too

the resurgent “parental rights” movement has spurred vigorous debate about how much control families should exert over their children’s upbringing and education. while this is not a bad thing, supporters have often defended parental rights selectively, insofar as they entrench conservative values, and ignored the fact that progressive families have the right to raise their children how they see fit, too.

though parental rights activism has existed for decades, support for the movement erupted in 2021, when american lawmakers began to pass legislation banning “critical race theory” from elementary and secondary schools. these reforms, which have since been expanded to restrict discussions of gender and sexuality, are now active in almost half of american states — and that’s reasonable.

should racial justice be understood through a progressive lens (as epitomized by the work of “anti-racist” thinkers like ibram x. kendi and robin diangelo ) or a conservative one (in the tradition of thomas sowell , shelby steele and john mcwhorter )? are radical approaches to gender and sexuality correct, or are “ gender critical ” perspectives more convincing? what middle ground can be found by recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of different frameworks?

these questions must be handled cautiously, but school boards have forgone nuance and instead pushed for the most radically progressive positions possible. there is nothing wrong with holding progressive views (political diversity is sacrosanct, after all), but privileging them so aggressively within the public education system amounts to indoctrination. conservative families, in this case, have been fully justified in pushing back.

the parental rights movement then grew to encapsulate gender transitions in schools, which is where canada entered the fray.

over the past year, new brunswick, saskatchewan and alberta have passed laws barring schools from formally recognizing changes to students’ pronouns or names without parental consent. this makes sense, as socially transitioning gender-questioning children is a major psychological intervention with potentially life-long consequences. for schools to secretly facilitate these transitions without parental involvement is, in almost all cases, a gross intrusion.

while these reforms illustrate the virtues of the parental rights movement, there are other areas where advocates have overreached and infringed upon the rights of progressive families — most notably with recent campaigns to ban lgbtq-related books and youth-oriented drag events.

yes, conservative families should have the right to shield younger children from some books that they believe are harmful (controlling the intellectual diet of older teenagers is another matter). however, progressive parents also have the right to expose their children to books that align with their own family values, including lgbtq-related material.

finding a balanced solution shouldn’t be too complicated. libraries and schools should simply provide a diverse selection of books that speak to both progressive and conservative values, and then allow parents to restrict which titles their own children can access. youth-oriented drag events should be permitted with generous opt-out opportunities for parents, so long as dress codes are respected and no presented material is sexually explicit.

yes, a small number of books are undeniably child-inappropriate (pornography should never be given to kids) and, yes, a small fraction of drag performers dress inappropriately in libraries (there should be more regulation in these spaces to prevent this). however, the vast majority of cases are not that extreme . the harms identified by many parental rights activists are, generally speaking, contentious and boil down to ideological or cultural differences.

for example, most people can agree that books that contain gender theory, or which simply showcase gay and trans people, are not objectively harmful in the way that pornography is. though some conservatives may ardently disagree, i fail to see how they differ from the ultra-progressives who, in recent years, have purged libraries of “problematic” materials based on specious “equity” grounds. the extremists on both ends lack intellectual humility and debase the pluralism inherent to democratic life.