Our Duty
Our Duty is an international support network for parents of a child who identifies as transgender. According to its own website, the group is active in countries including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and Canada, and says it has no religious or political affiliations. The name refers to the idea that parents have a duty to guide their children safely into adulthood.
What you can find
Its core activity is peer support: parents can register and be put in contact with other parents. The site also contains information pages on medicine, the law, and schools, country pages, and personal testimonies.
Why it is included on this list
Our Duty is outspoken: the group refers to gender ideology, calls medical transition harmful, and seeks to prevent children from undergoing it. This position is highly contested and conflicts with mainstream medical guidelines. The site belongs among the critical perspectives and is included here as a frequently cited parental voice on young people.
Founding and organization
According to its own website, Our Duty was founded in December 2018. In the United Kingdom, the organization is registered as a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee and has an office address in London. The organization page does not name any founders or directors. Our Duty asks visitors for donations but does not provide an overview of its income. In addition to the four countries mentioned in the introduction, the site also has country pages for New Zealand and South Africa (see gender care in South Africa). There are separate sections on schools for the United Kingdom and the United States. Parents who have registered can take part in weekly online meetings and monthly in-person meetings.
Positions
Our Duty writes that, in its view, there is no such thing as a transgender child. The group argues that many children grow out of their gender distress, anxiety, and depression if they do not transition, and that some later turn out to be homosexual. Instead of the term ROGD, the site uses the concept of transgender ideation: a set of ideas that, according to the group, leads children to believe that they are transgender. The organization says it holds governments and institutions that facilitate medical transition to account. In its news section, it responds, among other things, to the way the British NHS is implementing the Cass Review.
How to assess this source
Our Duty is a parents’ advocacy organization, not a knowledge center. Its information pages are written to support a particular position and mainly refer to related material, such as that produced by Transgender Trend. Those who use the site are therefore reading about how a group of concerned parents views care. For medical facts and figures, it is necessary to consult the underlying studies and guidelines directly. Comparable parent groups on this list include Bayswater Support Group and Parents of ROGD Kids. Parents in the Netherlands can find peer support through the support group cryforrecognition.nl.