Tonya Agnew is a mom of two adult children, a wife, and the Vice President of Communications & Marketing for Family Equality – a national nonprofit that protects and advances freedoms for LGBTQ+ families
Pack lunch. Set out the perfect first day outfit. Finish summer reading. Come out – again and again. That last one isn’t actually printed on the back-to-school list, but for LGBTQ+ families, it is definitely there as the calendar flips to September and the back-to-school season kicks into high gear.
As a mom of two kids, now adults, who are eleven years apart, my wife and I had 24 years of buying school supplies, 24 years of back-to-school seasons, and 24 years of coming out to teachers, administrators, and fellow parents. For us, it was a matter of family pride. We wanted our kids to be proud of where they came from and who their parents were. So at the start of each school year, we’d both introduce ourselves to teachers and attend school open house nights, orientations, parent-teacher meetings, and registration events.
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One thing stood out each time. Families of all shapes and configurations were everywhere, but the school’s systems and processes didn’t seem to recognize that.
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On that first school registration day in 1998, we encountered a form. It wasn’t a protest or a policy debate; it was a simple form asking to know who our child’s “mom” and “dad” were. While our oldest had involved and loving parents, we weren’t, in fact, a “mom and dad” family. We were a mom, a dad, and two stepparents.
Our blended family story wasn’t out of the ordinary. Around 15% of U.S. children in the late 1990s had one. The number remains similar now, serving as a reminder that families have never fit neatly into a single template.
In 2003, our family grew with the addition of our youngest son. As he started kindergarten a few years later, our frustration with forms continued to grow. Each year we filled out registration forms, teacher forms, field trip forms, club and sport registrations, and contact lists. Time after time, year after year, our family wasn’t recognized. I lost count of the number of paper forms where I scribbled out “father” and added a note with a curt suggestion about “getting with the times” and recognizing ALL families. I also lost track of the number of times I submitted an official request to the school district to update the online school registration form to use more inclusive terms like “caretaker” or “adult” instead of “mom and dad.”
But each summer, before classes began, I logged in to register our kids and was disappointed. Nothing had changed. My name and contact information were still relegated to the “father” section of the form.
It may seem like a small thing. After all, it’s just a form. Schools have thousands of details to manage, and form headings are hardly the most pressing issue facing an administrator at the beginning of a school year. But forms are more than paperwork. They are an institution’s way of saying, “This is who we expect you to be.”
When a form asks for “mom” and “dad,” it makes an assumption about what a family looks like before the school has even met them. And when your family doesn’t fit that assumption, you’re left with the choice of squeezing yourself into a box that doesn’t fit or correcting the situation.
That’s not an issue unique to LGBTQ+ families. For decades, families have included stepparents, grandparents raising grandchildren, foster parents, guardians, divorced and co-parenting parents, single parents, and more.
A more inclusive form acknowledges the reality that all these families exist. More than that, it lets people know their family is welcome. And it’s a simple place to start as families head back to school this fall.
More than two decades ago, my wife and I asked our children’s school to recognize our family as just that – a family.
Then finally, in 2017, our school corporation changed “mom” and “dad” to “contact 1” and “contact 2.” It took us from 1998 to 2017 to get there.
Two words. Nineteen years. And endless persistence.
The change wasn’t just better for families like ours. It was better for every family that didn’t fit neatly into two boxes. That’s the thing about inclusion: When you stop assuming what a family looks like, you make room for everyone. Sometimes creating a welcoming school doesn’t require sweeping policy changes or a big announcement. Sometimes, it starts with two words on a form.
The question is, who haven’t we made room for yet?
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