Where did the term parental rights come from?

The phrase "parental rights" — while by no means a new term — has re-emerged during recent conflicts over sexual orientation and gender identity policies in Canadian schools.

When some parents and socially conservative groups protested LGBTQ-inclusive education school policies on Wednesday across Canada, many did so under the banner of parental rights, scrawling the words on signs and invoking them in speeches.

It's especially come up in relation to policies that let LGBTQ kids change their name or pronouns without requiring schools to inform their parents. Saskatchewan and New Brunswick recently introduced policies that would require parental consent for children under 16 to do so, and other provinces are considering doing the same.

"I believe in parental rights, and parental rights come before the government's rights," Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre said during a recent interview with a Mississauga, Ont., news station. 

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Manitoba Premier Heather Stefanson have also used the term in their social media posts, while New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs kept his message focused on parental rights while greeting protesters, but not counter-demonstrators at Wednesday's March.

So what does parental rights mean, where does the phrase come from and who is included — and excluded — under its umbrella?

Those who are critical of the term say it's a misnomer that excludes LGBTQ parents or parents of LGBTQ children, and implies that parental rights take precedence over children's rights.

"I think we can think of the parental rights movement as a conservative movement to limit the influence of government in people's lives generally," said Jen Gilbert, a professor at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

"In the case of the marches that are happening this week and and more generally around the schooling, the parental rights movement has emerged as a movement to limit discussions of sexuality and gender in schools under the auspices of both protecting children and protecting parents' rights to raise children as they see fit."

As protests and counter-protests over LGBTQ rights in schools erupted across the country this week, CBC News spoke with people who had different understandings of parental rights.

"I think it's important that we respect parental rights [and] respect parental choices," said Nathan McMillan, a protester in Toronto. "If parents feel that sex education in a particular manner is not appropriate for their child, they should absolutely have that right to have those conversations privately offline."

Shawn Rouse, the parent of a transgender child in Quispamsis, N.B., interpreted the phrase differently.

"I think a lot of people try to frame this as parental rights. That is a phrase that has been around for decades. Whenever a parent has something they don't like at a public school, they say, 'Well, I have parental rights,' " he said.

"This is nothing new. Any time that a public school curriculum decides that they are going to talk about something that a parent might not be comfortable with, there's a pushback."