You Actually Do Co-Parent with the Government, So Make It Co-Parent Better

“Although pithy and pugnacious, the slogan is wrong. The moment parents drop a child off at the schoolhouse door, they entrust the school to take over some of their parenting responsibilities.”

“I do not co-parent with the government!” This t-shirt-friendly slogan has emerged in conservative circles as a rallying cry for parental rights. It is a strident way of voicing the conviction that parents—rather than the government—should have primary authority over children’s upbringing. Coined or popularized by the parental rights advocacy organization, Moms for Liberty, it has gained currency in recent years among parents who object to the critical social justice turn many public school systems have taken, especially with regard to policies and practices pertaining to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

Although pithy and pugnacious, the slogan is wrong. The moment parents drop a child off at the schoolhouse door, they entrust the school to take over some of their parenting responsibilities. Neither parents nor schools have a choice in the matter. The legal principle, in loco parentis—“in place of the parent”—obligates schools to assume certain parental duties pertaining to the child’s safety and well-being and empowers them to make certain decisions in executing that obligation.

But all the legal principle does is formalize the ontologically inescapable. Schooling is an extension of child-rearing. Schools exist to teach children the knowledge, skills, habits, mindsets, values, and virtues that will enable them to flourish as adults and live well with others. This inevitably involves judgments about what is worth knowing, which behaviors to encourage and discourage, and what norms to enforce on school grounds. Since these decisions involve value judgments, the schools cannot refrain from imparting values to students. All of this makes schools surrogate parents of a sort during school hours. They cannot not be. If one sends his child to a public school, he is, like it or not, “co-parenting” with the government.