Not the Nannies!
Having both had our children in our later thirties, my friend Liza and I would often talk about the ups and downs of being older, full-time moms. “Sometimes I get frustrated when younger moms and au pairs at the playground assume I am either the grandmother or babysitter,” she said one day. “I want a shirt that says, ‘Not the Nanny’!” So, as a gag, I went on Zazzle.com and created one.
Although I sold a few of the shirts, I never actually wore mine in public. This was back in 2006, during a flare up in the so-called Mommy Wars that pit mothers who are full-time caregivers and those who are working professionals. I was cautioned that it might be seen as derogatory to both working moms and nannies alike. I didn’t want to start any playground fights!
Today, the battle isn’t so much between working moms and those who stay at home, but over who has “the fundament right to direct the upbringing and education of children.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that right belongs to parents. The Left believes the government should have ultimate authority, and parents should be treated as nothing more than nannies for the State.
The latest politicization of parents’ rights started in 2021 when Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe brazenly said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” regarding Critical Race Theory and radical gender ideology. Not long after, the National School Boards Association insinuated that parents who speak out at school board meetings may in fact be domestic terrorists, a position Attorney General Merrick Garland echoed in his infamous memorandum.
The most recent example of the assault on parents is California’s SAFETY Act, signed by Governor Newsome on July 15, 2024. While claiming that “parents and families have an important [i.e., not fundamental] role to play in the lives of young people,” it prohibits school districts from requiring the disclosure of “any information related to a pupil’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person [i.e., parents] without the pupil’s consent.” It also prevents school districts from penalizing school employees who deliberately hide this information from parents.
The law was prompted by more than a dozen California school districts that rightly required staff to notify parents if their child identified as transgender or asked to go by a different name or pronouns. California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Chico Valley Unified School District over their policy that recognized the fundamental rights of parents, calling such information-sharing “a forced outing policy.” A Republican member of the California Assembly called the lawsuit a “war on parents.”
Thankfully, parents and politicians are fighting back against the SAFETY Act. Elon Musk, who recently shared his heartbreak due to his son succumbing to the trans ideology’s “woke mind virus,” called the law the “final straw,” an attack on parents, and vowed to move his companies from California to Texas because of its passage. “The goal [of] this diabolical law,” he tweeted, “is to break the parent-child relationship and put the state in charge of your children.”
Chino Valley USD School Board President Sonja Shaw asked, “Who in their right mind thinks it’s a good idea to create and pass laws that make it illegal for parents to be part of their child’s educational experience? This legislation weaponizes the system against those who know and care for their children the most.”
“Parents are not the enemy. They are critical to a child’s growth and wellbeing, and they have a constitutional right to be involved in their education. This new law says loud and clear that . . . politicians and school administrators trump parents when it comes to what’s best for kids,” explained James Gallagher (R), Minority Leader of the CA Assembly.
In a recent article in the Free Press, Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage wrote, “Recent polling shows that voters across the political spectrum believe that schools should be required to inform parents if their children are using different gender pronouns at school than they are at home. . . . Parents’ best hope may be federal legislation mandating parental notification before a school can reassign a child’s name and gender. Candidates for president and vice president ought to be asked whether they would support such a bill.”
All parents, whether on the right or left, know that no one loves their children more than they do and no teacher, school employee, doctor, or politician should be allowed to interfere in the sacred parent-child relationship. It is time for families to unite to tell the government to back off and stop trying to raise our kids. We will not let the Nannie State demote us. We are Not the Nannies! WE are the parents!
