Chemical Kids

24 Tex. J. Women & L. 67

60 Pages Posted: 17 Aug 2016

See all articles by Kim H. Pearson

Kim H. Pearson

Gonzaga University - School of Law

Date Written: Fall 2014

Abstract

Courts and other state actors are often involved in making decisions that impact families. Making these decisions means routinely measuring parental behavior to determine what is best for children using metrics drawn from the cultural landscape of parenting advice and norms. Parenting advice combines medically informed behaviors with suggestions that parents can produce certain childhood outcomes, increasing pressure for parents and implicitly valuing some outcomes over others. In situations like substance abuse, society has largely agreed that there is a negative health outcome if a parent uses drugs during pregnancy. Newly discovered risks to children’s health create parenting norms and legal responses to parental compliance with protective behaviors. Unlike parenting norms that are directly linked to obvious health risks, like death and serious injury, some risks to children are a complex mix of health risks and bias against certain outcomes. This Article considers parenting norms related to chemical exposure in children to interrogate the interplay between social values and legal responses to non-conforming childhood outcomes.

The popular media has been warning parents about exposing pregnant women and young children to Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) in household items, food, toys, and water for years, citing dangerous risks to sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Headlines like “Boys with Boobs” and “Why are Boys Turning into Girls?” frame the risks of EDC exposure as a possible external disruptor of children’s development. Parents are not yet legally or socially responsible for limiting EDC exposure in their children like they are for smoking, substance abuse, and other behaviors that pose a health risk to children. The possibility that courts will begin to hold parents legally responsible is not improbable; the scientific community has been aware of EDCs for over twenty years and is moving towards establishing a causal link between exposure and negative health outcomes. EDCs are different from other risks to children captured in legally enforced parenting norms because there is no widespread agreement that the kinds of outcomes linked to exposure are purely health concerns. The confusion fueled by popular science about identity development and legal regulation of outcome-focused parenting can lead to fears of parental liability, conviction, or child removals when parents fail to conform to mainstream parenting norms, particularly norms concerned with childhood development and health. This Article uses the developing concern over chemical exposure as a threat to development to critique legally enforcing norms without paying attention to the interaction between “high intensity” production-focused parenting and the valuation of childhood outcomes, particularly where insufficient clarity about the nature of those outcomes may harm families with gender and sexual non-conforming children.

Keywords: Children, Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals, gender identity, sexual orientation

Suggested Citation

Pearson, Kim H., Chemical Kids (Fall 2014). 24 Tex. J. Women & L. 67, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2824110

Kim H. Pearson (Contact Author)

Gonzaga University - School of Law ( email )

721 N. Cincinnati Street
Spokane, WA 99220-3528
United States

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