WASHINGTON—The Heritage Foundation released a new video today featuring real-time reactions from mothers reading “woke” children’s books that have been used in public schools.
Heritage recently sat down with Patrice Onwuka, Patti Hidalgo Menders, and Marguerite Bowling to have them each read several children’s books that promote gender identity and sexual orientation policies.
“As the left stretches out its reach to influence the next generation, publishers and children’s book authors continue to infuse books—even those written for very young audiences—with radical ideas on gender and sexuality,” said Lauren Evans, Heritage’s multimedia director and co-host of The Daily Signal’s “Problematic Women” podcast. “We wanted to highlight that many parents are not okay with this effort.”
The three moms read “I Am Jazz,” “Who Are You: The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity,” and “My Princess Boy.”
“Now you know, this is where I get really upset,” Onwuka, a mother of three, said halfway through reading “I Am Jazz.”
“Because if I had a little girl, and then a little boy, who says ‘oh I want to be like your little girl,’ says ‘I’m going to start using the same bathroom’—at such a tender age where they are still discovering their sexuality and their bodies, I would be so uncomfortable,” said Onwuka, who is the economic policy director at the Independent Women’s Forum and the co-host of WMAL’s “O’Connor & Co.”
Menders, a mother of six and president of the Loudoun County Women’s Republican Club, warned that “I think these books are harmful to children because it is not reality.”
“It’s pushing a narrative into this child’s mind to think a certain way, to be a certain way.”
Bowling, who is a mother of three and senior communications manager at Heritage, added: “I don’t need to introduce my 5-year-old to these concepts at such an early and impressionable age.”
Lindsey Burke, director of Heritage’s Center for Education Policy, said parents deserve more transparency from schools about what children read and learn, as well as more choice in the options available to them.
“All too often, children are being forced to listen to these books under the guise of ‘celebrating differences’ or learning about ‘being themselves.’ But the ideologies in these books don’t align with the values many parents hold. Parents deserve more transparency about what their children are learning in schools and the option to choose another school when their assigned school doesn’t reflect their values,” Burke said.
