Protecting Parents in a Postmodern Age

Nov. 1, 2023

With the growing erosion of parental rights in civil law, Catholics are called to proclaim and defend the very meaning of the human person

By Elizabeth Kirk

Nov. 1, 2023

The natural family, based on marriage, has long been understood as the place where a child should be conceived, welcomed, raised and educated. In most cases, the child will eventually leave his mother and father, marry another, and start all over again. Thus, the family is said to be the cradle of society. The Church, likewise, has always recognized the family as the fundamental “cell” of society and parents as the first and primary educators of their children.

St. John Paul II, known as the pope of the family, underscored the grave duties of parents to care for their children, to provide for their spiritual, emotional and physical needs, and to form them in virtue and in faith. In his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, he observed, “The fruitfulness of conjugal love is … enlarged and enriched by all those fruits of moral, spiritual and supernatural life which the father and mother are called to hand on to their children, and through the children to the Church and to the world” (28).

The family must have freedom in order to fulfill these obligations and to live out its purpose to the full. The law has long recognized that parents have fundamental rights so that they can exercise their responsibilities. These rights are not given to parents by the government, but rather are natural rights that the government has a duty to protect and foster. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that “the right and duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable” (2221).

The Supreme Court of the United States has also acknowledged this understanding, referring in 2000 to parental rights as “the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.” Indeed, nearly a century ago, the Supreme Court affirmed in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, “The child is not the mere creature of the State; [rather] those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” (Notably, the Knights of Columbus underwrote the litigation in that landmark case.)

And yet, parental rights have in recent years become more and more vulnerable. Parents are frequently pitted against the state, and even against their own children, in numerous contexts, including disputes about access to locker rooms and bathrooms, the appropriateness of library books and curricular content, mandated vaccines, and more. Too often, the role of parents is thwarted or diminished.

In the case of medical decision-making, the law increasingly grants authority to minors at the expense of parental authority. Many U.S. states, for example, do not require parents to consent to, or even be notified of, their minor daughter’s abortion. More than a half-dozen states permit a minor as young as 14 to consent to any medical treatment without the consent of his or her parents. A newly adopted California bill will allow children 12 years of age and older to consent to “mental health treatment” and be put in a residential shelter under certain circumstances, without having to consult with their parent or guardian.

These are only a few instances in which the rights of parents, the good of children and the interests of the state intersect and collide. But there is an even more fundamental challenge to a robust protection of parental rights: We now struggle to define what a parent is in the first place. Under traditional parentage law, a mother was the person who gave birth to a child — though it was hardly necessary to say so! Determination of paternity was typically based on marriage, but as nonmarital births exploded over the last several decades, it has increasingly been determined by genetics. But even genetics are not enough to determine parentage given the increasingly complex family structures made possible by technology and surrogacy. Candidates include the egg donor, sperm donor, gestational carrier and any number of intended parents.

In this new order, there are no given family relations deriving from marriage or the gift of a child. Instead, marriage and parenthood are increasingly seen as chosen (or rejected) to fulfill the desires of adults. Some now even call for the state to recognize — and facilitate with taxpayer funding — a fundamental right to access technology to become a parent. The Right to Build Families Act of 2022, introduced last year in Congress, but not successfully passed, would have created a statutory right to assisted reproductive technology.

Civil law, which guides human conduct, should be based on truths, accessible to us through reason, about the nature of the human person. These truths include that we are embodied in two sexes ordered to complementarity; that there is an intrinsic connection between the sexual act and procreation; that marriage is the privileged place where sex ought to occur and children ought to be welcomed; and that parents are uniquely and best suited to provide for the care and upbringing of their children.

Once rights are detached from a proper understanding of the human person, they no longer make sense. Why should we protect parental rights when what it means to be a parent is arbitrary?

Over many decades, however, U.S. law has become nearly completely unmoored from these truths — with its protection of contraception (which detaches sex from procreation), nonmarital relationships (which detach sex from commitment), no-fault divorce (which detaches marriage from commitment), abortion (which denies the mother-child relationship and the humanity of the child), reproductive technologies (which commodify conception and children), and surrogacy (which commodifies and erases motherhood).

Once rights are detached from a proper understanding of the human person, they no longer make sense. Why should we protect parental rights when what it means to be a parent is arbitrary? A parent in the new order is a mere creature of the state and, as such, is interchangeable with the state or a state-appointed expert.

The breakdown of the family, the collapse of marriage and the increased sense that parents and children are each other’s enemies have grave consequences. All over the world, we see a terrible denigration of the dignity of the human person and a rejection of our duties of care and love for one another. There must be a better way.

In order to protect the freedom and authority of the family as the fundamental cell of society, and in particular the natural right of parents to direct their children’s care and education, the law must recover a proper understanding of the human person. Only then can the family live up to its calling as a school of humanity and be, according to St. John Paul II, the “most effective means for humanizing and personalizing society” (FC, 23).

This high calling, together with support for vulnerable families, was at the heart of Blessed Michael McGivney’s vision for the Knights of Columbus. Despite the challenges we face in law and society today, Knights and their families can help ensure that the truth of human life and love is proclaimed, valued and protected through both prayerful witness and making their voices heard in the public square.

*****

ELIZABETH KIRK is director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at the Columbus School of Law at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Supper at Emmaus (oil on canvas) by Rembrandt (1606-1669) (Photo Josse / Bridgeman Images)

Protecting Parents in a Postmodern Age

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