Author: Julia Bowes
“Parental rights” is a rallying cry for today’s American conservatives, signaling opposition to mandatory vaccination and “woke” public school curricula.
In “Every Man’s Home a Castle,” Julia Bowes traces the origins of the modern parental rights movement to the 19th century, when the introduction of compulsory schooling laws, child labor regulations, and vaccine requirements provoked a resistance rooted in the presumed right of white men to govern their homes.
A wide-ranging coalition—including Irish Catholic immigrants in Illinois, Mormon enclaves in Utah, and Protestant clergy in Virginia—believed that the state had usurped the “natural rights” of parents and “invaded the home.”
Bowes shows how, by the turn of the century, those disparate voices had coalesced into national conservative movements.
Anti-vaccinationists, alternative medical practitioners, and parents who opposed compulsory school medical exams joined forces to form the National League for Medical Freedom.
