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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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To what degree should the state be allowed to hide things from someone's legal guardians?
Like, I totally understand the impulse here, but I don't know that it's actually a good one.
What if the state refused to tell a kids parents that they were struggling with depression, and then the kid self harms, and the parents weren't given the opportunity to provide the support network necessary to get them the help they need.
I'm certain that there are a lot of bad parents out there who would not handle this information about their child well. This article proves it even. But parents being terrible parents isn't limited to this issue. Should the state be empowered to step in and force them to be better parents? Should the state be allowed to lie to them about what their child is doing at school in order to prevent them from making certain decisions about their child?
I'm not saying that the state has to reinforce the parents viewpoints. Far from it. Schools should be free to set curriculum to what they want and enforce whatever code of conduct makes sense for the school, parents be damned. But I feel a lot weirder about it when the state starts actively lying to the parents about what's going on with their child while in the state's care.
This is exactly the backwards question. Part of the essential role that schools provide for childhood development is that they are a place where the parents don't see everything.
The relevant question is "how much should a school be forced to tell the parents if the child objects". And in the case of gender identity, that answer is zero. Either the parents already know, or the child has presumably very good reasons not to tell.
To what degree should educators be required to communicate to the parents? They are responsible for creating a safe environment for the students, where they can participate and gain the knowledge and skills outlined in the curriculum.
It seems like this policy is supporting exactly what their job actually is, and it does not concern itself with the fee fees of these helicopter tyrants that need to give permission for their children to socialise the way they want.
Gee, what if those same parents spent time with their own children so that they wouldn't be so ignorant of them? No, better sue some teachers instead.
I agree that the parents should be better plugged in with their kid and know what's going on with them.
The question is more "to what degree should the state enforce good parenting." Should being a bad parent be allowed by the state? Should the state be allowed to lie to you to trick you into being a better parent?
The parents in this situation seem like they probably suck. We don't disagree on that.
It's not a trick, it's completely irrelevant to their job.
Is wearing a skirt going to help or hinder retention of the Pythagorean theorem? Neither? Well don't waste my tax dollars sending emails about it.
Is the child getting bullied? Does that help or hinder retention? Hinders? Then put a fucking stop to it. Again, don't waste my tax dollars sending emails and having meetings, do something relevant like discipline the bullies.
What if people didn't keep coming up with slippery slope bullshit and just addressed what actually happened?
A slippery slope is saying "if we allow thing 1, then later we will allow thing 2." That's not what I'm saying at all.
I'm saying the current thing makes me uneasy, and trying to clarify the left and right bounds of when that one thing is okay to do, if it ever is.
I think we can all come up with instances where it's wrong for the school to lie to parents. If you catch a kid smoking for instance, it shouldn't be acceptable for the school to not tell the parents. And it should be doubly unacceptable if the parents ask for the school to lie to them about it.
Schools aren't perfect. What I'm about to say might actually be a slippery slope, but if schools are allowed to lie to parents about their children, I don't think it's a far leap to say they will lie to cover up bullying and abuse to prevent themselves from being sued or held accountable. Bad schools can be just as bad at being a safe place for kids as bad parents.
But aside from that, I think there's an important meta conversation to be had about what a parent's responsibility to their child is. I think in addition to the obvious of providing a safe and loving home, a parent is responsible for raising their child to be a good member of society. It concerns me when the state begins to take that responsibility away from parents and put it on itself.
Now, sometimes that is something the state needs to do. If a child is being actively abused, the parents should be sent to prison, and the state should (in absence of another parental figure that can take in the child and is willing to do so) assume custody of that child. In which case it is the states responsibility to raise that child into a good and responsible member of society.
But these weird half measures where the state says, "you're not an abusive enough parent for us to take your children away from you, but we don't like the way you're raising them enough that we're gonna actively lie to you about what your child is doing at school," feel bad to me.
You are making a slippery slope argument because you're taking a situation involving schools respecting a preferred name and pronouns and turning it into an argument about a child killing themselves and the school hiding the warning signs from parents.
If you were really concerned about children self harming, you shouldn't be arguing that the state act as a snitch in a situation like this. Calling someone "he" instead of "her" or calling them by a name other than what's on their birth certificate by request isn't going to lead to physical or mental harm. Ratting a kid out to their bigoted parents when they've specifically asked you not to very likely will lead to physical and mental harm. These children aren't property of the parents and they should be given some agency over their own lives as human beings.
I think it's probably more analogous than you are painting it as. The trans community suffers elevated levels of suicide risk, and parents who are in the dark about what their child is going through are less equipped to get them the help they need if they need it. Parents of trans kids often have to get them emergency mental health services due to them being bullied or ostracized. If the parents are kept in the dark about it, they may not see the problem until it is too late.
And I agree that children aren't property, but they also aren't fully independent agents. Children need guidance. Children need to be raised by parents who love them and are involved in steering them to be a successful and active participant in society. Children should not be allowed to make every decision for themselves without question. They need to be required by an authority figure to eat their vegetables and brush their teeth.
They have agency certainly, but not unlimited agency, and we need to figure out what the left and right bounds of that agency are. And that will change as they age and get older, and will be different from child to child even. But who decides that? My gut is that it's the parents. I feel like every other option is unpalatable.
Your argument seems entirely disingenuous to me. Describe the situation where a student feels comfortable and confident enough to share this aspect of their life with their peers and teachers at school, but not at home with their parents. These parents are "loving and involved in their child's life" but somehow also in the dark about their child's identity and mental health. I don't see how you can meet all this criteria without a ton of mental gymnastics.
Should this be extended further into other hot button political issues? Should a school inform parents if their white child is hanging out with black or brown students? Should schools inform parents if their straight child is hanging out with LGBT students? Should they inform parents if children are expressing leftist or right wing viewpoints? Why or why not? What's the difference?
It's almost as if there was a reason that this student didn't want their parents to know.
Let's take the pronouns out of it. Suppose you have a child named Elizabeth who wants to be called "Beth". This child tells the teacher "please don't tell my parents that I'm going by Beth; they'll beat me if you do". In a rational world, the teacher would be able to report this as the child abuse it is. But imagine this teacher lives in a city/state/country where the judicial system refuses to prosecute nickname-related beatings as child abuse.
What is the morally correct action for this teacher to take?
When has this child been beaten by the parents? That would indeed be abuse! Being disrespected by own child…
It's not an easy decision. You are taking it on face value that the child is right. I have seen many children afraid to tell their parents something that they think will upset them, only for the parents to be totally cool with it. It's very common.
Now, if you truly believe that the child is right, I do think there's still a moral difference between not telling the parents and actively lying to them if they ask.
If asked, I think that probably the correctest decision is probably to refuse to answer and tell the parents that's a conversation they need to have with their child? Idk.
I've seen a scenario where the parents were actively beating their kid if he got good grades because they wanted their kid to fail out. Should the school have lied to the parents about what grades he was getting? CPS refused to remove the kid from the home. What should the school have done in that scenario?
Ultimately, I think navigating when and how the state intervenes in parenting is tricky. It's very case by case, and in most scenarios there aren't really good answers. What's the line where kids are taken away? What's the line where the courts mandate training or intervention in the home? What's the line where the state starts just actively lying to the parents about their child to protect them? If you've crossed the lying line, why haven't you crossed the removal line?
I don't know that there's a good answer to a lot of these questions. But in general, I think that the state hiding things is usually the wrong answer.
The parents are suing the school over pronouns and preferred names. Parents who are "totally cool" with their transgender child don't tend to do things like that.
I believe they should only be required to tell if they child is a danger to themselves or others. Just like mental health professionals. As long as they aren't a danger, I see no reason for a school to tell the parents anything but grades and classroom behavior.
I think I would agree for, like, a school counselor for instance. That's much more analogous to something like a therapist. Teachers aren't mental health professionals though. They're there to teach.
But I think we need to have a more meta conversation about the idealized roles of parents and schools.
In my mind, the parent has the ultimate responsibility for the raising of their child. It is their job to teach their child how to be a good and responsible member of society.
School is there as an institution of formalized learning to help build an educated society.
School is not a day care. School is not there to teach your child how to be a good person. School does not obviate your responsibility as a parent to raise your child right.
Obviously teachers should model good behavior to the children in their care, as should every adult in their life, but the ultimate responsibility for that falls on the parents.
When the school actively lies to the parents about their child, they are taking away the parents ability to fulfill that responsibility.
Now, the school may be doing it for good reason. Many parents are bad parents, and are doing a poor job of raising their children. Most even. People suck.
But the state saying, "you're not raising your children poorly enough that we are going to take them away from you, but we disagree with how you're doing it enough that we're gonna actively lie to you," feels like a weird middle ground to live in that doesn't feel great to me.
You are inventing a situation to try and make the school look bad. The child specifically asked the school not to tell the parents. The school didn’t invent some standard against the parents to not tell them. The child did. Data establishes quite clearly that revealing information like this to parents is harmful to the child.
School is not just an institution for formal education. Schools are have rights and responsibilities with regard to child care. Most schools act as a co-parent, providing structure, support, and discipline, while also fostering social, emotional, and intellectual growth. This situation is the equivalent of confiding in one parent and not another. Even if their parents were totally cool with names and pronouns, betraying that confidence destroys the child's trust, agency, and sense of security.
If a parent believes it's their sole responsibility to rear their child, they should be homeschooling. The second you put a kid on a bus, you're co-parenting with the state.
Legally, the school is acting in loco parentis, granting it the necessary discretion to decide what is best for the students' well being while school is in session. As long as the students' civil rights are respected by the school, the school is well within their rights to perform parental functions. Also, social and emotional learning are part of the curriculum everywhere. Education has functions beyond rote learning, which is what makes us a society and not just a chaotic mass of tribes and individuals.
This is a very basic tenet of the social contract with regard to public schooling. The education system houses all the necessary expertise and pedagogical know-how to educate at scale. (Most parents are not experts in pedagogy, social/emotional learning, etc.) They are making this expertise available, FOR FREE (through taxes), to all children inside the borders of this country. In return, individual educators, departments, and schools reserve the right to decide how best to apply that expertise.
If parents disagree with that, if they are uncomfortable with that and they want more control, etc... that's fine! What you don't get to do, is fundamentally break the public system - for my kids and everyone else - just because you as a parent don't like the fact that public school teachers are honoring your child's humanity, civil rights, and teaching them to treat others the same. That's anti-social behavior.
You are free to opt out of the public system entirely, forfeit its benefits, and either send your kids to a private school of your choosing, start your own private school, or homeschool your children. At your own expense. We all collectively pay taxes to subsidize real education in public schools, not the ideological whims and misadventures of rogue individuals, who have their own ideas about education. We know better.