Spotlight: Natalya Murakhver of Restore Childhood
Empowering Parents Through Data
By Nancy McDermott
Genspect USA is pleased to welcome Natalya Murakhver to the ROGD Awareness Day Conference on August 16th. Murakhver is a co-founder of Restore Childhood, and co-author of An Urgent Conversation: What to Know about Children, Gender & School Policy, a toolkit for parents, students, mentors, teachers, and administrators.
Nancy McDermott: I wondered if you could say a little bit about Restore Childhood and what inspired you to create the new gender toolkit.
Natalya Murakhver: Sure. During the Covid 19 pandemic, I was one of the “open schools” moms in New York City and organized the lawsuit against the mayor and the city in 2020. After we won and the schools opened, the children were still required to wear masks, so the next battle was to get the masks off the kids. So, I started working with a group of physicians who were willing to speak up about the evidence that kids needed to be unmasked as quickly as possible.
The result was The Urgency of Normal Toolkit. We called it “the urgency of normal” because we strongly believed that this was an emergency and kids needed to go back to normal school, normal socialization, and normal sports as quickly as possible. We wrote letters, did podcasts, and got the word out – and within a few months, mask mandates began to fall away.
The thing that really struck me about that experience was how parents started reaching out to us, not just from around the country but around the world, basically telling us that this was the first time that they had gotten all the information they needed in one place and in a very non-emotional, apolitical kind of way. It was the first toolkit that empowered them to go to the school board and demand that the mandates be lifted.
So, Dana Hensley and I decided to set up an organization to advocate for evidence-based policies for children by giving parents information in a nonpartisan way.
NMcD: And you’ve done something similar with the issue of gender in the schools?
NM: Yes, exactly. We’ve created the An Urgent Conversation Toolkit to empower parents with knowledge and to enable them to feel confident in advocating for their kids and educating their kids in a nonpartisan way, with data and not politics, right?
NMcD: Why is this so important now?
NM: Well, with Biden’s new Title IX legislation coming into effect, so that gender replaces sex, parents really need to know how things could change. I always use the organic milk analogy. So, in communicating to parents of young children that perhaps the higher quality milk or a higher quality feed that’s organic or sustainably raised is a good idea, they often say, “Oh, I didn’t grow up on organic milk” or “I wasn’t worried about getting pasture-raised milk or my parents never worried about getting pasture-raised milk or organic vegetables.” And I say, “Well, the food system has changed. Here’s how it’s changed; here is why it matters for your children; this is what you can do about it.”
It is the same thing with anything that we do at Restore Childhood. We try to raise awareness about how things have changed and why it matters to parents right now.
NMcD: Why do you think the nonpartisan piece is so important?
NM: Because, speaking to parents in New York City and around the country, I have noticed that there’s a great fear of being smeared as a “right-winger”, “Trumper” or a “transphobe” – or whatever word you use to silence people. We’re trying to give them the information and the confidence to lift their voices up again. We’re trying to heat up speech instead of still it, both at home and outside of the home. The toolkit is also meant for families to absorb and take their time with, to read and re-read. That way they can use it to inoculate their children against the confusions of gender ideology. It’s an inoculation because it begins in the home.
NMcD: I notice that you have the QR code for the latest version.
Yes! We will take any criticism and feedback and consider whether it improves this school kit which is a living document. So, I go back to Chris Kaliebe, our scientific medical advisor who has been with us from the beginning of the development of the school kit, and we make decisions about what revisions are appropriate and how to make them.
Join Natalya Murakhver and Dr. Kris Kaliebe Genspect USA webinar about An Urgent Conversation August 22nd at 1:00pm EST. Register here.
