Who gets the final say over who can see your child?
At a Florida campaign event last week, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds was confronted by a weeping grandmother who asked him to intervene so she could get access to her grandson.
The woman said she hadn’t seen the child since Aug. 7 — not quite a two-month span — and begged Donalds, who’s running to become the Sunshine State’s next governor, to uphold “grandparents’ rights” if he wins.
The video went viral, driven in part by the sad trend of family estrangement, often over political disagreements.
In the last decade or so, more and more adults seem to be cutting off their parents, “going no contact” on the advice of therapists, friends or social-media kibitzers.
A major survey this spring found that 38% of the adult Americans polled had deliberately shunned a friend or family member in the last year.
That’s heartbreaking and awful: Families shouldn’t let political opinions poison otherwise healthy relationships.
But asking the government to step in and solve that problem is a dangerous remedy.
And despite the assumptions of many commenters, politics had nothing to do with the plight of the grandmother pleading for Donalds’ help.
The woman blamed “pettiness” for her daughter’s choice to keep her grandchild from her: “I refused to babysit, because I had plans,” she explained tearfully.
Then came a kicker that should set off every parent’s alarm bells: The woman said she was working with her representative in Congress, Republican Randy Fine, “to see if we could do a federal law so it could be nationwide.”
(It’s unclear if this is true; messages to Fine’s office this this week requesting confirmation went unanswered.)
The crying woman pulled at the heartstrings, and Donalds promised to “look into” the issue.
For a politician on the stump — especially one running in a state full of grandparents — he did the right thing by empathizing with the sad grandma and then moving on.
Others might be less canny.
With senior voters a major force in American politics, lawmakers may well be tempted to try to legislate our way toward family reconciliation.
They should reject that impulse.
But in state after state, they’re giving it a try: Last year, legislators in Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri and Minnesota introduced bills that would force parents to give an estranged grandparent access to their children. None of these bills has yet become law.
And with good reason: The reality is, parents must have the power to make decisions in the best interest of their child.
Consider a case out of Rhode Island this year, when a judge found in favor of a father who didn’t want his deceased wife’s parents to see his children.
The turning point came when the father introduced evidence in court that the grandparents had secretly recorded him as he voiced concerns about how far they’d go to get what they wanted.
Judge Felix Gill said the tape “reinforces the reasonableness” of the dad’s apprehensions “and his decision to restrict visitation.”
The landmark “grandparents’ rights” case, which reached the US Supreme Court in 2000, found that fit parents should get “deference” when deciding what’s best for their child.
That case challenged a Washington state statute that allowed “anyone” to request access to a child — and permitted courts to “order visitation rights for any person when visitation may serve the best interest of the child.”
The chilling idea that anyone could petition to see your child still exists in statutes in Connecticut and Delaware.
Yet in the last few years parents across the country have successfully mounted a defense of parents’ rights.
They’ve won court battles to require parental notification and consent in cases involving transgender transitioning in schools, and fought for their ability to opt their kids out of questionable lessons and objectionable reading assignments.
National groups like Moms for Liberty have mobilized to make sure that parents have authority over their children’s education, associations and medical decisions.
These hard-won gains shouldn’t be dissolved by a grandmother’s tears.
Parents are the final say in what happens with their children, period.
Any attempt to breach that barrier will erode their rights and bring on legal and financial torture.
Grandparents, important and loving as they may be, can’t claim the same bonds and don’t bear the same responsibilities that parents do — and politicians should stay out of these family disputes.
Karol Markowicz is the host of the “Karol Markowicz Show” and “Normally” podcasts.
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