Mary Rooke Commentary and Analysis Writer
The latest left-wing opinion piece arguing against parental responsibilities just dropped, and boy, is it a doozy.
Russell Shaw, the head of school at Georgetown Day School in Washington, D.C., instructed parents in the art of choosing or not choosing, in this case, who your child is friends with. He cites his career as a teacher as proof of his expertise in this matter, telling parents that if their children are friends with kids who act in ways that are antithetical to their family values, it’s better to let them stay in relationships with the destructive influence rather than assert parental authority.
“A natural impulse is to forbid contact — but that’s likely to backfire,” Shaw says, adding, “A parent’s job isn’t to control, but to remain a loving caregiver who ultimately trusts their child’s capacity to make good choices.”
With a new school year comes new friendships for kids—some welcome to parents, some less so. Russell Shaw has strategies for when your child’s friends “seem to embody everything you’ve tried to teach them to avoid”: https://t.co/HLvyUslwhn
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) September 2, 2025
Shaw’s understanding of the true definition of the parent-child relationship appears to be clouded by the increasingly modernized view that children can be trusted to make good choices without parental intervention. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
He claims that if your children make friends with other kids who are disruptive to your family’s belief system, cutting them off is the wrong way to go. Instead, you should let them continue to have influence over your children in hopes that they’ll naturally distance themselves from the bad kids.
And while he does admit that families that reinforce their connection at home are more successful at this, which I wholeheartedly agree with, he misses the point. He says parents aren’t there to control their children, but that is precisely what we are there to do. However, I don’t exactly call it control. It’s more like guidance.
Friends have such an impact on behavior because, as kids grow older, their world widens, which he touches on, but falls way short of realizing that it’s our responsibility as parents to ensure the company our children keep shares similar values to ours.
And children aren’t capable of navigating this alone. They need their parents to be actively participating in the choosing process. That’s not to say that you pick your children’s friends, but if someone they’ve chosen is a jerk, bully, or bad influence, a parent has the right and responsibility to intervene in that friendship.
Going back many decades, there has been an ongoing attack on parenting and its role in preserving family values across generations. This piece is no different from this. Still, instructing parents that their best option is to passively watch as their children stray away, rather than guard them from this, is a major contributor to the destruction of the traditional family.
How many times have we heard that children turned into completely different versions of themselves after negative influences entered their lives? This story is nothing new to modern families, whether the culprit is drugs, sexualization, or mental health issues like anxiety, depression, or transgender ideology. (ROOKE: Childhood Game Turns Into Deadly Nightmare As Kids Navigate Low-Trust World)
The march toward parents being nothing more than financial keepers of the next generation is ruining our society. Actually, we have every right to tell our children not to hang out around others who would disrupt the family balance or open their world to negativity, and just because a school principal is the one urging you not to do that doesn’t mean it’s right.
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