Christian Parents Fight Social Workers Over Daughter’s Wish to Become a Boy

Parents' lawyer said it's possible social workers may take the girl into custody if parents don't recognize their daughter as a son.

A Christian family in the United Kingdom is confronting a local authority for supporting and furthering their 14-year-old daughter’s wishes to become a boy in disregard for the parents’ wishes or faith.

According to The Sunday Times, the parents, teachers and social workers will meet in November to decide whether the young girl will be addressed by her birth name or by a male name she has chosen. The family’s attorney, Michael Phillips of Andrew Storch solicitors, said he feared that social workers could remove the girl from her family’s home if the parents did not comply with the social workers’ instructions.

In another recent case, a judge criticized social workers who allowed a mother to raise her 7-year-old boy as a girl, despite the fact that the boy did not want to be a girl. The judge concluded that the social workers were promoting a transgender equality agenda over the desires of the child.

The Sunday Times spoke to the 14-year-old girl’s mother on condition of anonymity. The mother said that she felt her daughter was too young to make her own decision on this issue and “parental responsibility should take precedence” until a child reaches 16 or 18. “The rights of parents in the UK are being eroded, especially those who have traditional Christian values,” she said. “It is leaving parents to feel fearful, vulnerable and intimidated.”

The girl has displayed tomboy tendencies from a young age and her parents allowed her to wear “sporty” clothing. While she just revealed in March that she thought might be transgender, the council began referring to her as a boy and using a boy’s name in correspondence in June.

The parents have felt intense pressure to recognize their daughter as a son, said the girl’s mother, and were even threatened that she may commit suicide if they don’t comply. “We were told by the psychiatrist that CAHMS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] said that if the name change does not happen then she would be a high suicide risk.” She and her husband believe that, rather than focus on their daughter’s depression, possible autism or other mental health issues, the social workers and CAHMS were “pushing the transgender issue.”

Social workers contend that since the parents are devout Christians, they cannot accept that a person can “have a different emotional and psychological identity from their biological sex,” reported the Times. A psychiatrist asked the parents to consent to send the girl for treatment at Tavistock Centre in north London — a clinic that treats children preparing to undergo sex change surgery.

The girl has a non-platonic relationship with another female, which social workers describe as “heterosexual,” because she “identifies as transgender,” The Times reported.

Christian Legal Centre’s Andrea Williams said, “The transgender cultural movement is creating a new ‘conflict of rights’ within the family. This is the emperor’s new clothes. Authorities are forcing an agenda that is not true, and harmful to children. This case demonstrates shocking disregard for parental authority: no one is listening to what the parents want or have to say. They know the child the best, and have the child’s interests at heart.” Christian Legal Centre is funding the legal support for the parents.

Philips said the law was unclear regarding where parental authority stops and children’s rights begin. “Under the age of 18 a person is considered a child,” he said. “They may be granted limited rights after the age of 16. The assumption is that a parent is acting in the best interests of the child, unless proven otherwise, for example, by a local authority in care proceedings. The child has a right to be listened to, and we see this enshrined in the Children Act 1989.”

The girl’s mother said that if her daughter becomes transgender after turning 18, that was her choice. “But we do not want her turning around 10 years from now saying we failed to help her avoid a wrong choice.” She added that the pressure due to the controversy had been severe. “It threatens the bonds between parents and children,” she said, and that social workers had influenced her daughter to promote their pet cause. “It feels as if [our daughter] has an agenda she now has to maintain.”