Children’s rights have been at the centre of conversations about gender identity in Canada.
Education minister Stephen Leece announced in August that he believes parents should be fully involved in children’s decision to change their pronouns at school. He follows similar programs adopted by Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.
Many people talk about children’s rights when it comes to gender identity and gender-inclusive education, but not many people actually know what that means.
According to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, some of the responsibilities include allowing children to have their own unique identity and providing an environment free from discrimination.
These are recommendations that Canada signed and agreed to in 1991.
The convention states “children have the right to their own identity, and an official record of who they are.”
Keeping this in mind I don’t think parents should be deciding their kids’ identity or giving them permission to change their personality. Nor do they have the right to discriminate if they are truly invested in protecting the rights of a child.
Kids have every right to do what they want to do. They should change what they want to change. It is their body, identity, and their personality. Children also have the right to give their opinions and have their voices heard.
A poll conducted by Angus Reid reported 43 per cent of parents said they must be informed and give consent on any identity changes while 34 per cent of parents said they should simply be informed.
Only 16 per cent of parents said it should be up to the child and not the parents.
Decisions need to be made with a child’s best interest at heart, otherwise, the consequences could be dire.
In Pakistan, my ancestral country, being LGBTQ+ is considered to be a criminal act. I’ve heard many stories about people who came out to their families and were eventually rejected and estranged.
There are certain things we cannot do. We can’t date and must arrange marriages. We have to become housewives and take care of kids and husbands.
If I were a bisexual Pakistani and I told my parents I had been dating a woman for three years and would like to marry her, they would ask me to leave.
An important issue in this is that gender-affirming care is a mental health issue.
Slightly more than 30 per cent of cases involving youth aged between 12 and 22 with gender dysphoria reported at least one suicide attempt, a study patient records at a transgender clinic in Cincinnati found.
Gender dysphoria is when there is a conflict between the sex a person is assigned at birth and the gender with which they identify.
A study from Cedars-Sinai hospital found most gender dysphoria is established as early as the age of seven, and 59,460 people in Canada identify as transgender according to a 2021 Statistics Canada report.
Leece should think about how this would affect the children if parents gave them permission to change pronouns and more. We all want to be who we want to be and change what we want to.
Don’t let anyone change who you are. Do what you wanna do. If you love your child, support them, hold them and give them unconditional love and support.