Why We Should Listen to the Way Republicans Talk about Parents’ Rights

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is sputtering. He seems destined to end up a minor historical footnote in the story of American politics. So it’s wise not to draw too many lessons from the campaign of division and discrimination he has waged against vulnerable communities in Florida. Maybe it was enough to get him elected as Governor, but even amongst a very right-leaning national Republican primary electorate, his “anti-woke” platform isn’t working.

But there is one element of DeSantis’s agenda that is worth paying attention to: his laser-like focus on “parental rights.”

DeSantis’s vision of parental rights is odd, hateful, and honestly kind of creepy. He pretends as if our schools are sex shops with teachers spending six hours a day fervently trying to turn our children into drag show performers. He believes that parents need to be empowered to micromanage school library shelves in order to get rid of the tidal wave of prurient books drowning students, force the termination of teachers and administrators who dare talk to students about anything other than multiplication tables, and rid schools of the true threat to student safety – gay and transgender kids. It’s bigoted utter nonsense, and it’s getting kids killed. For instance, the majority of transgender children in American have contemplated suicide. That’s a heartbreaking statistic, and it’s a direct result of adults like DeSantis making gay and transgender children feel like they are abnormal and dangerous. That’s why I regularly speak out against this agenda, as I did last week on the Senate floor.

So then, why do I suggest that this effort is worth paying attention to, if it’s so divisive and harmful? Because at the core of it, DeSantis has actually tapped into a legitimate, real emotion felt by millions of parents in America: a sense that they are no longer in control of their children’s lives. Today, parents, on both the right and left, sense that forces larger than them and outside of their control and influence are corrupting their kids and limiting their chances of future success. Parents do feel a lack of agency over their kids’ lives, and they want political leaders to talk about this.

There are a number of phenomena at play leading parents to feel this way. First, parents see a culture that is increasingly in conflict with the values they try to impart on their kids. Character used to matter more in America, and culture used to reflect this priority on teaching integrity, honesty, humility, and hard work. Today, character has been replaced by celebrity and consumerism as the primary American ideals. Clicks and likes have become a proxy for value. Being a good consumer now seems more important than being a good citizen. Individual achievement blots out any concern for the common good. Parents are having a hard time keeping up with this devaluing of virtue and character in our culture, and in the absence of responsible voices, they too often respond to demagogues like DeSantis who are talking about a divisive vision of values, but in a vacuum.

Parents are also watching their children disappear and withdraw into technologies they barely understand. TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms are transforming kids’ lives. The rapid pace of change, and the constant new entrance of platforms into young people’s daily lives, leaves adults feeling helpless. I saw the profound impact that social media algorithms have on students during a recent visit to a suburban high school in my state where I talked to young people about the impact of social media. I was pitching them on my legislative proposal to ban the use of corrosive, addicting algorithms for users under the age of 18. Many of these students were aghast at the idea. They could not fathom losing access to the technology that feeds them an endless conveyor belt of curated content. They could not imagine having to do the hard work and trial and error required to find interests or connection. Parents live with the consequences of the sudden erasure of age-old teenage rituals, like discovery and exploration, and feel helpless to fight back against the power of these addictive platforms.

Finally, fewer parents than ever feel equipped to deliver the one gift every parent wishes for their children: a better life. Economic mobility is vanishing in America today, and parents – especially lower or middle-income parents – who believe that children who work hard and play by the rules are supposed to get a shot at a higher quality of life are losing faith in that essential component of the American dream. Fewer parents can afford to send their children to college. Only forty percent of adults have more than $400 in the bank, meaning that millions of parents can’t help their child rent their first apartment or buy their first car. This is spiritually debilitating for parents who feel like failures for their inability to help launch their children into lives of prosperity.

The collective impact of these phenomena on parents  is crushing, and Republicans know this. But instead of offering responsible solutions that actually match the problem set, conservatives like DeSantis have concocted an imaginary world of sexualized educational settings and told parents that the way they reclaim all the control they’ve lost over their kids’ lives is to rid schools of a ghost that doesn’t exist. It’s a clever ruse, but DeSantis’s plunging popularity suggests the trick might be getting old and tired.

It's up to the rest of us to realize that parents are looking for public policy that gives them new tools to impact their children’s health and safety in meaningful ways. And if responsible leaders don’t come up with a thoughtful parents’ rights agenda, then DeSantis won’t be the last reactionary to offer up division, fear and scapegoats as the answer to parents’ legitimate concerns about the modern state of childhood and adolescence. What does this agenda look like? That’s for another essay, but it would start with more talk from leaders about the common good, and less focus on individual attainment; more serious focus on passing social media regulation, like my Protecting Kids on Social Media Act; and economic policy that lowers the cost of college and raises parents’ wages.

The conservative parents’ rights campaign is worth fighting against. It has no relation to the actual challenges that our kids are facing today, and it simply serves to turn Americans against each other. But parents are hurting out in America today, and the answer to DeSantis and others isn’t alternating between jeering and silence; we need our answer for what parents are feeling today.