If Your Parents Aren’t Accepting of Your Identity, I’m Your Mom Now

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported on the clash between parents and schools over whether parents have a right to know when their children take steps to socially transition:

Jessica Bradshaw found out that her 15-year-old identified as transgender at school after she glimpsed a homework assignment with an unfamiliar name scrawled at the top.

When she asked about the name, the teenager acknowledged that, at his request, teachers and administrators at his high school in Southern California had for six months been letting him use the boy’s bathroom and calling him by male pronouns.

Mrs. Bradshaw was confused: Didn’t the school need her permission, or at least need to tell her?

It did not, a counselor later explained, because the student did not want his parents to know. District and state policies instructed the school to respect his wishes.

“There was never any word from anyone to let us know that on paper, and in the classroom, our daughter was our son,” Mrs. Bradshaw said.

From the second sentence on down, the piece shows the difficulty of reporting ‘neutrally’ on trans. The reporter must immediately pick a side: will she refer to 15-year-old in question as a boy or a girl?

The reporter sides with the child’s transgender identity. The child becomes a boy. And as soon as the child becomes a boy in print, as soon as the journalist reports as fact what is in question, the moral calculus shifts. How Mrs. Bradshaw found out becomes secondary to the ‘fact’ that the child she considered her daughter is now her son and the question of what transgender identity means slips out of the picture altogether. When the child is defined as a boy, the mother is defined as mistaken and trans identity as a given.

Still, there’s some decent reporting here. The conflict comes through loud and clear, and parents are permitted to have range of political persuasions and personal stances toward transition:

But dozens of parents whose children have socially transitioned at school told The Times they felt villainized by educators who seemed to think that they — not the parents — knew what was best for their children. They insisted that educators should not intervene without notifying parents unless there is evidence of physical abuse at home. Although some didn’t want their children to transition at all, others said they were open to it, but felt schools forced the process to move too quickly, and that they couldn’t raise concerns without being cut out completely or having their home labeled “unsafe.”

“It’s just been such a hard thing to navigate, because on the one hand, I’m dealing with my very extreme liberal values of individuality, freedom, expression, sexuality, wanting to support all of this stuff,” said a tearful mother. “At the same time, I’m afraid of medicalization. I’m afraid of long term health. I’m afraid of the fact that my child might change their mind.”

As other parents nodded in agreement, the lone father in the room said: “It’s politically weird to be a very liberal Democrat and find yourself shoved in bed with, like, the governor of Texas. Am I supposed to listen to Tucker Carlson?”

One mother in California shared messages that her teenager’s teacher had sent through the school’s web portal encouraging the student to obtain medical care, housing and legal advice without the parents’ knowledge.

A lawsuit filed against a school district in Wisconsin included a photo of a teacher’s flyer posted at school that stated: “If your parents aren’t accepting of your identity, I’m your mom now.”

At schools in states such as Michigan and New York, parents said that teachers had used a student’s new name in class but the old one with them, so that they wouldn’t be aware of the change.

On the other side, the New York Times profiles teachers and administrators who see their role as protecting students from ‘unaccepting’ families:

Other teachers believe they have a moral responsibility to withhold such information.

“My job, which is a public service, is to protect kids,” said Olivia Garrison, a history teacher in Bakersfield, Calif., who is nonbinary, who has helped students socially transition at school without their parents’ knowledge. “Sometimes, they need protection from their own parents.”

One of Ms. Garrison’s former students is Clementine Morales, a 19-year-old who first came out as nonbinary at school because it felt impossible to do so at home.

“I had to look for parental figures in other people who were not my parents,” Mx. Morales said.

“For many of our students, school is their only safe place,” Mr. Gazda said during that meeting, “and that safety evaporates when they leave the confines of our buildings.” Concerns over parental rights, he added, are in fact thinly veiled “intolerance and prejudice against L.G.B.T.Q. individuals.”

But there’s a theme in the reader comments that’s worth addressing:

If you have a trans kid and they tell their teachers first, the problem isn’t the teachers or your child, it’s whatever you did to make them feel like they couldn’t trust you.

Don’t ask why the schools didn’t tell the parents; ask why the students didn’t tell their parents. The answer to the second question explains the first question.

The answer is an uncomfortable truth that a lot of these parents seem unwilling to confront. For some reason, their kids don’t trust them with this information. Rather than engage in some self-reflection, they’re blaming the school. Maybe the kids are right.

These commenters are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting the youth subculture that’s grown up around transgender identity, transition, and disclosure. A lack of reporting on the ways online trans communities shape youth expectations does readers a serious disservice.

Online trans communities prime kids to expect rejection—even abuse and expulsion from the home—when they come out to their parents. These communities also encourage kids to interpret any hesitation—anything less than immediate, enthusiastic acceptance of a child’s new trans identity—as rejection.

Parents who go along with new names and pronouns but raise concerns about testosterone or surgeries are accused of being unsupportive and “saying all this mean stuff.” Users warn each other: “You have a right to be upset, they’re not accepting. They’re just trying to appease you until you get over the ‘phase’.”

Secrecy is part of the lore of youth gender transition. Secrecy divides a young person’s social world into those who know and those who don’t. Thus, secrecy binds youth to their new “glitter families” and alienates real-world connections, including parents. Secrecy raises the stakes. Going behind parents’ backs is a common topic in online trans communities, with young people swapping tips on how to bind, pack, start testosterone, or even undergo a double mastectomy while living at home without parental approval or awareness.

This is part of a larger pattern of phobia indoctrination in online trans communities, where anyone who questions gender identity or transition risks being painted as a hate figure. Loved ones who express concerns or doubts are accused of “denying the existence of trans people”—or worse. This indoctrination pushes community members to cut out loved ones who challenge or contradict a young person’s new set of beliefs about gender. Even loved ones who simply fail to follow elaborate and often bizarre protocols around ‘deadnames’ and pre-transition memories risk being shut out.

At every turn, these communities sow suspicion and dissension between parents and children. In other words: don’t talk it out, do create distance.

Don’t tell my parents.

That’s context that schools and teachers need when evaluating youth requests to keep trans identity a secret, in the absence of any specific reason to think that parents will react badly. When educators fail to understand the context in which young people form transgender identities and develop expectations for transition and disclosure, they risk exacerbating alienation and estrangement at home by appointing themselves as secret-keepers and surrogate families.