Trans children: Parents in court!

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When worry becomes a criminal offense?

On 15.09.2025, Emma reports on a sensational case: a teenager goes to court with the support of the youth welfare office - against his own parents. The accusation: they refuse him access to so-called puberty blockers, i.e. medication that delays the onset of physical puberty. The parents reject this intervention because they consider it to be risky for his health and psychologically stressful. However, this is apparently precisely the reason for the youth welfare office to question custody.

What is happening here sounds like something out of a bad movie - but it is reality. There are still only a few cases, but parents are increasingly being targeted by the authorities when they refuse medical interventions that their underage children want because of their self-perceived gender identity.

Between ideology and child welfare

The legal and social debate surrounding trans issues for minors is highly complex - and extremely charged. Proponents of puberty blockers argue that the medication should give young people time to come to terms with their identity - without the body already undergoing irreversible changes.

Critics, on the other hand - including many doctors, psychologists and parents - warn of an over-medicalization of children's discomfort, of social pressure situations and, last but not least, of long-term physical consequences that have not yet been sufficiently researched scientifically.

And this is precisely where the conflict lies: Can parents who refuse a medical intervention out of responsibility and concern really be considered a danger to their own child? Or are they perhaps protecting them by doing so?

State versus parents - a new normal?

If courts now have to decide whether parents lose custody because they refuse hormone blockers, there is more at stake than a medical dispute. It is about fundamental questions of parental rights - and about the balance between the state's duty to protect and the family's personal responsibility.

After all, who ultimately decides what is good for the child - the state or the family? The tendency to disenfranchise parents who disagree with the medical or political mainstream is dangerous. Especially at a time when medical measures are associated with massive interventions in the body and psyche.

Custody is a duty

If parents soon have to go to court because they want to protect their child, something is seriously wrong. Anyone who believes that caring means agreeing to a teenager's every wish - even serious medical interventions - has not understood the principle of responsibility.

Custody is not a popularity contest. It is a duty. And many parents take it more seriously than some state authorities. If this becomes a problem, then the real problem is not with the parents - but with a system that has lost its compass.