Lying To Our Children - Hey, All Parents Do This, Don’t They?

It’s not Santa you need to worry about…

During this holiday season, if there is any involvement of Santa Claus in your home, you are lying to your children. Because as all adults know, Santa in all his many iterations is at best a myth, in most cases one that our own parents shared with us when we were small.

Although there is some discussion on various parenting forums from a minority of parents about not utilising Santa (because this would be promoting an untruth to one’s children), by and large Santa is so incorporated throughout our western societies that even if you don’t want the jolly red man in your home, you are going to have to talk about him anyway because of his ubiquitous presence in every shop and public venue in the land. Any formal setting your child attends (day care, school, etc.) will likely be trotting him out as well. I doubt it would be possible to raise a child in most societies in ignorance of Santa.

What are some reasons that parents might lie to their children?

Childhood traditions are probably the most common reason that parents lie to children. Santa isn’t the only mythical figure in the lives of many children. The Easter bunny and the Tooth Fairy also feature in many households.

These can serve a useful purpose, while at the same time promoting family fun and togetherness. The origins of Santa date back to the 4th century and the man who served as the origin figure for today’s white bearded, fat old man was renowned for his generosity and his care for neglected children. Not a bad role model in today’s capitalist society.

A normal part of child development is the exercise of imaginary play and sometimes complex stories with elements that adults understand are impossible to bring to ‘real’ life. But only the most hardhearted of caregivers would refuse to pretend that a beloved teddy bear could not partake of the ‘tea’ being offered by a solicitous toddler.

Parents also are lying to their children with the aim of boosting their self-esteem. Not every child can be the “best” player on the team or win every competition. Parents who emphasise doing the best that you can do over winning are equipping their children with the skills of resilience and a sense of worth that will carry them forward into adulthood. True self esteem stems from understanding both your strengths and your weaknesses and working with both of these to maximise your potential.

Continually being told that you are the best at everything can be counterproductive and confusing once children launch into an adult life that is composed of those not centering them as perfect and not as forgiving about imperfections (which we all have!)

And then there are the white lies of convenience. “Sorry, the cookies are all gone.” “No, we can’t go to the shop; it’s closed.” That toy that is driving you nuts as it bleeps, chugs, whistles and shouts, starting at 6 am? Who could blame a parent for removing the batteries and commenting sadly “Gee, it must be broken.”?

These lies are for our benefit, not our children’s, but are probably the most acceptable for most people. Sometimes as a parent, you are just too damn tired to go another round with an explanation that could take too much time from your day. Accepting the truth can be hard for some kids, so making it up (“sorry sweetheart, but the park is closed so we can’t go there right now”), and a fib gets you off the hook more efficiently.

Parents may withhold the truth in various situations, mainly those where the truth makes them feel uncomfortable. Death, divorce, sex, and childbirth are categories that fit the bill here.

Until your child reaches a certain stage of development, there is no way they are going to understand the finality of death. Honesty is important however, because children are literal thinkers and telling them that Grandma has gone to sleep in Heaven is a lie that can cause problems for them.

Divorce is hard for families of every age, but some version of the truth that doesn’t leave children feeling responsible for the rupture of their family is vital to children’s long-term wellbeing.

There are many age appropriate conversations that you can have about sex and childbirth, but straight out lies may come back to bite you. If you are going to tell your children lies that fall apart as they grow, this will erode the trust they have in you about other things as well.

Except when it doesn’t.

What is the biggest lie being sold to children and their parents in today’s modern world?

That they can choose which sex they prefer (including none at all) and change their body to match their choice.

Everyone’s sex is determined at the moment of conception when one sperm from a biological man enters the ovum (egg) travelling down the Fallopian tube of a biological woman. The only exception to this universal truth is the relatively far less common of method of conception of one sperm inserted into an ovum by a lab technician, with the resulting embryo being placed into a uterus.

This is not just true for us humans; it’s how mammalian reproduction works. Every fertility clinic and animal breeder on the planet acknowledges this in the course of their work. Clients can’t pay for a mix and match service that creates new people, dogs, horses, etc. from their choice of gametes because the only combination that works is one egg and one sperm. And that one sperm determines the sex of mammals.

The phrase “assigned at birth” is another lie that is told. No one is “assigned” a sex at birth; the observable distinctions between girls and boys are so stark that only in the rarest of circumstances is it not immediately apparent. About 0.018% of the population has a Disorder of Sexual Development (that used to be called intersex) and even many of these do not present as ambiguous genitalia at birth; some conditions are not discovered until puberty. Gender is not a consideration when a baby is born; all that is recorded in medical records is a baby’s sex.

Queer theory zealots would have us believe that children who aren’t yet born are aware of their gender and have the ability to choose this. I don’t believe this myself, but even if you do, this is irrelevant because what really counts is one’s sex and that is not up for choosing.

Gender may indeed be a social construction, but sex is immutable and not subject to half-baked ideas that escaped from academia and the fevered brains looking for a place in history.

If your wee boy prefers dress ups to the construction table at preschool, this is not an indicator that he is “really” a girl. An active, sporty girl who doesn’t nurture her doll is not choosing “boy mode” over being a female. If this is what you think, then you are guilty of promoting and reinforcing the very gender constructions that have imprisoned us all since, well forever.

The lie that you can change/choose your sex is so harmful to children that any qualms over Santa pale into insignificance.

Social transition is just the start but can be nearly impossible to pull back from. The next step of puberty blockers is self-explanatory: puberty blockers stop normal human development in its tracks. These powerful drugs (the same ones used to chemically castrate paedophiles and to treat prostate cancer in men) wreak such havoc on prepubescent children that unless they are on them for a short period of time only, permanent harm is perpetrated on children.

Puberty is not just the outward and obvious bodily modifications that turn boys into men and girls into women. This is important, but even more important are the changes that are not easy to see. Important things like brain maturity and bone construction. Evolution has programmed our development in a particular way for a reason. We all get one shot at this and it’s not a rehearsal, it’s a one-off chance at maturity.

The trans train is unstoppable. Social transitioning and puberty blockers followed by cross sex hormones cause permanent infertility by sterilising both sexes. Girls go through menopause in their mid-teens; boys lose the ability to produce viable spermatozoa. But it’s far worse than an inability to gestate or father a baby. These children will never have a normal sex life, will never experience orgasm or sexual pleasure. Parents consenting to these “treatments” need to realise that the very act that brought forth their beloved child will be permanently denied to their children.

Your child is either a girl or a boy in every cell of their body. Changing an outer appearance makes not a bit of difference to your sex. A transgender individual remains who they were born as even after death. DNA testing will not find a man with silicone breast implants to be a woman.

Before you turn Peter into Penelope or vice versa ask yourself some questions:

• Are you only helping them in the short term, which might affect things in the future?

  Sure, your boy may be upset that he has a penis when he wants to be a girl. But how does lying to him now help him come to terms with his reality as a boy? What would happen if you supported him through his distress until he was mature enough to understand that being a boy who is different from other boys is OK?

  And if you confirm children in their gender dysphoria, are you actually telling them that there is something wrong with them and they need to change their bodies to be loved?

• Will your lie confuse them or give them unrealistic expectations of people?

  Children are literal creatures who don’t understand nuance or consequences. A girl I knew thought that it was wonderful that her friend (a boy) had “become a girl”. And why was this? Because “now he can have a baby when he grows up”. These children were 12 years old.

• Is the lie for you or them?

  Many gender non-conforming children grow up to be same sex attracted, but this is not acceptable to some parents. Susie Green (until recently the CEO of the UK charity Mermaids) told the entire world in her TEDX talk that she had her son castrated at 16 so he could be a girl because she “knew” that otherwise he would be a gay boy.

• Are they able to understand the truth?

  The last part of the human brain to mature is our frontal lobe. This is the bit that separates us from other mammals and the part of the brain that differentiates children from adults. Contained within the folds of our frontal lobes are most of our intellectual capacity, our abilities to empathise with others, to exercise impulse control and judgement; in other words, our capacity for thinking ahead and rationalising the long-term ramifications of our actions. This is the part of our brain that we use when making informed consent medical decisions.

Which is why we don’t let children deny themselves lifesaving cancer treatments that are uncomfortable, unpleasant or painful. Because children lack the capacity to make a choice between relatively short-term unhappiness and long-term benefit. Parents make these decisions because they can make this choice in the best interests of their children; because they have an understanding of the future that children cannot have.

When children grow up and realise that far from being transgender, they had many other psychological problems that were ignored because the adults around them raced to “affirm” them, they feel angry and sad. Angry and sad at their mutilated, damaged bodies and their lost opportunities. Angry at their medical teams who were so single minded that major red flags were ignored. And at their parents who didn’t say “no” even though at the time “no” was not going to fly.

As another Christmas approaches, please join in the magic of Santa Claus with your kids. All you need is some imagination and a spirit of fun. No harmful drugs or mutilating surgeries will be required, just hugs and kisses for those beautiful, perfect bodies they were born with. And when your children eventually learn that Santa was you, trying to give them a special holiday season, they will resolve to celebrate with their own children when it is their turn to make the magic come true again.