PARENTS SCHOOLS PARTNER : GENDER IDENTITY PRECIS

 

Parents and schools clash over gender identity. Some students in U.S. find educators more accepting of their wishes than family

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 counsellor 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.

The Bradshaws have been startled to find themselves at odds with the school over their right to know about, and weigh in on, such a major development in their child's life.-   

A dispute that illustrates the wrenching new tensions faced by school districts, which have long been a battleground in cultural conflicts over gender and sexuality, over how to accommodate transgender children.

The Bradshaws accepted their teenagers' new identity, but not without trepidation, especially after he asked for hormones and surgery to remove his breasts.

Doctors had previously diagnosed him as being on the autism spectrum, as well as with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, PTSD and anxiety.

He had struggled with loneliness during the pandemic, and, to parents, seemed not to know exactly who he was yet, because he had repeatedly changed his name and sexual orientation.    

Given those complexities, Mrs. Bradshaw said, she resented the fact that the school had made her feel like a bad parent for wondering whether educators had put her teenager, a minor, on a path the school wasn't qualified to oversee.

''It felt like a parenting stab in the back from the school system,'' she said. ''It should have been a decision we made as a family.''

The World Students Society thanks author Katie J.M. Baker