Parent Rights

I recently read the disgusting story of a police officer and his wife who were arrested for handcuffing and jailing his own three-year-old overnight, for two nights in a row, for the "crime" of soiling himself. Their defense is that it was their parental right.

Thankfully, Florida state law recognizes this as an actual crime. I suspect the parents, unless there is evidence of other abusive or neglectful behavior, will get off with a warning, perhaps a required parenting course, and maybe some sort of probationary period during which the appropriate state agency will keep tabs on them for a time. That's probably what's best for the whole family. Not only was that poor boy traumatized by his parents' actions, he likely feels responsible for getting his parents in trouble, the whole episode will remain with all of them for the rest of their lives, and, thinking rationally, it's probably best to allow them to deal with the natural consequences and move forward.

Of course, it's tempting, in anger, to want those parents punished more severely. How could anyone treat a young child like that? On the other hand, I'm confident there are others who feel that these officers were within their rights as parents and are outraged that the state would presume to step in to a "family matter." Indeed, these parents obviously felt that way. After all, as the father is quoted as saying, "it worked."

"Parent rights" stands at the center of much of the current controversy swirling around our public schools. The argument being used to ban books and speech is that parents have the right to protect their children's innocence about certain topics, especially with regard to gender, sexuality, and race. There are even some who don't want their child taught anything that smacks of social-emotional learning, sternly scolding that schools should stick to all-academics-all-the-time. And there are some who believe they have the right to jail their three-year-old.

My child is an adult now, but when she was young I also felt that, ultimately, my rights, as her parent, were paramount. I wasn't anti-vaccination, for instance, but I did ask our pediatrician lots of questions which resulted in delaying some and staggering others. I once had words with one of her teachers (firm but without involving his superiors) over what I saw as an inappropriate use of collective punishment. And in that same spirit I tried to respect the rights of other parents. When we invited another girl along on a family vacation, her father gave me long list of dos and don'ts as a condition of letting her join us, a list that contained many things I found ridiculous, but to which I nevertheless adhered. Although had one of those conditions been, say, to spank (or jail) her, I would have let him know that I wasn't going to do those things and let him be the one who told his daughter why she couldn't join us.

There is always a line. Jailing a three-year-old clearly crosses that line. When the line is crossed, the rest of us get to override the parents. The challenge is knowing where the line is drawn and we're not always going to agree on where that is, but let there be no doubt: there is a line beyond which parents lose their rights, even if they cross it in the privacy of their own home. We, as a society, through our institutions, get to decide when a parent has engaged in abuse or neglect. When that happens, the parents lose their rights.

The "parent rights" argument, as currently be used against our public schools, however, is an entirely different thing, although it's not new. Parents who exert their rights to "protect" their children from discussions of gender, sexuality, and race, are in a head-on collision with the rights of parents who see it as essential that their children be educated about those very things. On one side, parents say they are concerned that their white children, for instance, will be made to feel shame and guilt over discussions of our nation's history of slavery. They say that discussions of gender or sexuality will plant ideas in their children's heads, confuse them, and are an attack on their "innocence." On the other, parents are concerned that if these topics are excluded from classroom discussions, their child will grow up thinking there is something wrong with them unless they are white, straight, and identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. Our public schools are currently in the process of figuring out how to navigate this, just as the public at large is doing the same thing.

I was recently talking with my mother about her decision to put me on the bus when the courts ordered the desegregation of public schools in 1970. Most of my neighborhood friends, all white, were pulled from public schools and sent to segregated private schools, many of them citing their rights as parents. I recall a neighbor worrying that if her white child went to school with black children, he might grow up to marry one. Mom told me that she wanted her children to attend pubic schools because "you would be spending the rest of your life in public." She wanted us to learn how to live, work, and play in the real world. She was, and still is, a woman of morals and values, and she definitely wanted us to share them, she told us so, but she also knew that once we walked out the front door, we were in public where we would be not just be exposed to a diversity of people and ideas, but have to learn to share public life with them. When I heard things while in public, either from teachers, books, or other children, that unsettled my worldview, I would discuss them with my parents. They would tell me their views. I can't tell you how often Mom would start a sentence with, "Some people believe . . ." or "Some people don't think . . ." I'll never forget telling her about the Theory of Evolution, a scientific framework that continues to be vilified by many people. She said, "Well, I guess if that's the way God created the world, then who are we to say it's wrong?"

I'm old enough to remember when prayer was banned in school. Our teachers, from one day to the next, were no longer allowed to lead Christian prayers. This was, in part, a parent rights issue. Parents of non-Christian children didn't want their kids forced to pray Christian prayers. When this happened, my Christian mother told us that we could just say our own private prayers, shrugging, "Prayer isn't for showing off anyway. It's for talking with God."

My point is that when you send your child to public school, you don't lose your rights. No parents do. But at the same time, it's in the nature of "the public" to be diverse. Ideally, it's a place where individuals come together as a community that doesn't just make room for everyone, but is created by everyone. Within our own homes, within the confines of our chosen communities, we have the right to exclude people and ideas, but the very definition of "the public" in a democratic society means that our ability to exclude others is very limited. And as for lost "innocence," isn't that just another way of saying lost "ignorance?" 

I understand that in a diverse world, we all draw our lines in different places. In private, we have an almost unrestricted right to decide where those lines go, but the moment we step into the public, we are just one point of view in a world of points of view and it always means a loss of innocence. I'm often critical of public schools on this blog, and I remain so, but it was my experience in public schools combined with my relationship with my parents that taught me how to be myself in this diverse world, while at the same time allowing others to be themselves. My academic education may have been inferior, but my public education was unsurpassed.

Believe me, I understand parent rights. I value them. I strive to honor them. But unless you're prepared to be the jailor of your own child, they will lose their ignorance. It's called education.

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