Parents, Policy and the Future of Childhood: Who Should Guide the Next Generation?

Children, Culture and Moral Boundaries: Part Three Of A Three-Part Examination

At the heart of debates about identity education, sexuality, and childhood lies a simple question:

Who is responsible for guiding children through these complex issues?

In Part One, we saw how moral boundaries around sexuality, marriage, and human identity are being actively contested and redefined in our culture, a tension laid bare by the reaction to Cory Bernardi’s comments.

That tension was illustrated more concretely when Year 9 students at Renmark High School were exposed to graphic material, including references to bestiality and incest, during a Respectful Relationships session delivered without adequate parental notification or oversight.

In Part Two, we examined how institutions, schools, governments, and external providers, have assumed an increasingly significant role in shaping children’s encounters with these same questions, often placing pressure on traditional expectations of parental involvement.

Part Three now draws these threads together by asking what may be the most important question of all:

Where does responsibility ultimately lie?

For most of human history, the answer has been relatively clear.

Parents carry the primary responsibility for raising their children, shaping their values, and helping them navigate life’s moral and emotional challenges.

Scripture itself frames this as a profound entrustment:

“Train up a child in the way he should go…” (Prov 22:6) and the command to impress God’s ways on children within the daily rhythm of family life (Deut 6:6–7; Eph 6:4).

In modern Australia, that responsibility now sits alongside increasing institutional involvement.

Schools deliver identity and relationships education. Health systems and governments develop policies framed around the “best interests of the child,” often drawing on instruments such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Family Law Act 1975 still begins with the presumption that parents are best placed to make decisions about their children.

Yet, as Parts One and Two demonstrated, the boundary between support and substitution has become less clear.

When cultural narratives (Part One) and institutional programs (Part Two) introduce contested ideas about gender, sexuality, and moral limits, sometimes without prior parental knowledge or the ability to opt out, families can find themselves sidelined.

This risk is heightened in certain policy settings.

In Victoria, for example, Department of Education guidelines relating to LGBTIQA+ student support allow schools to facilitate aspects of a child’s social transition, including changes to name, pronouns, uniforms, or facilities, and to assess whether a student may be considered sufficiently mature to make such decisions independently.

In some circumstances, this can occur without parental involvement where concerns about family response are identified.

Supporters argue these approaches are designed to protect vulnerable young people from potential harm. Critics, however, question whether they risk displacing parents in decisions with significant personal and long-term implications.

Confidentiality policies designed to protect teenagers in cases of genuine risk are understandable in limited circumstances.

Yet when applied more broadly, they can raise difficult questions about whether parents who remain deeply invested in their children’s wellbeing are being unnecessarily excluded.

Similarly, policies regulating digital environments or curriculum content may be well-intentioned, yet they surface the same underlying tensions:

• authority and autonomy

• family and state

• particular convictions and universal frameworks

From a Christian perspective, the family remains the primary community of moral formation.

Parents are not merely one voice among many; they carry a responsibility that no school, policy framework, or institution can fully replicate.

Children are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14), and the enduring relationship between parent and child provides the context in which that identity is formed over time.

Public institutions can and should support families, providing resources, education, and protection where genuine risk exists.

But they are not designed to replace the relational bond and accountability that parents carry.

Where safeguarding concerns arise, the appropriate response is careful, transparent involvement of authorities, not the routine exclusion of parents from decisions with significant personal implications.

This is why transparency, genuine partnership, and clear communication between schools and families are not optional extras; they are essential to maintaining trust.

Without them, even well-intentioned policies can contribute to division and uncertainty, as seen in the response to the Renmark incident and in broader debates about identity and education.

Cultural change is inevitable. Every generation faces new questions.

Yet one principle has remained remarkably consistent:

Children require protection, patience, and the wisdom of those who know them best as they grow into adulthood.

Institutions may educate, and Governments may regulate, but the responsibility for guiding young people through life’s most formative years does not begin with systems or policies.

It begins in the family.

Preserving a healthy partnership between parents, communities, and institutions will be one of the defining challenges of the years ahead.

That partnership requires:

• clarity about roles and boundaries

• respect for differing convictions (including faith-based perspectives)

• and a commitment to open, evidence-based conversation

Above all, we must remember:

Children are not ideological battlegrounds.

They are young human beings still discovering who they are, deserving of care, guidance, and trust-filled relationships that begin, and are sustained, within the family.