Minors between family and justice: the new courses of psychological advice to grant the shared custody of a child

Abstract

In the context of the deep changes and ethical solicitations that invest our social and cultral life, also the law appears more sensitive and careful to the needs, vulnerability and even lacks of those who, because of several occurrences in their lives, are exposed to other people's, and also to one’s own fragility. According to this view, the law on shared custody, promoting a different ethical undertaking of public authorities, increases the value of each parent’s responsibility and capability of curing and taking care of their children’s emotional and moral needs, in the difficult situation of couple conflict. The principle of double parenthood is the proposed tool to achieve a model of cooperation not to be intended as the continuity of a family after all its ties have been broken, but as a way to restore and requalify children’s relationships with both their parents. According to the new connotations that the introduction of shared custody has imposed to the management of parents’ responsibility, also a technical advice in the civil procedures of separation and divorce, is aimed at new and dynamic configurations able to solicit to radically rethink all their procedural and methodological finalities. In this new context of double parenthood a technical advice assumes, in fact, the function of mediation and planning of the most suitable interventions to accompany and sustain the transformative run of the family, safeguarding its fondness and emotional resources. Over passing the traditional request to choose the most suitable parent, the expert investigation is aimed at individualizing and searching the affective, pedagogical and relational resources that all family components are able to provide to promote a harmonic psychophysical development of minors during their developmental transitions. According to this new point of view, which wants to stop making a pathology of separation, the new technical advise is intended to draw functional profiles of parenthood, aimed at promoting a balanced relationship between parents and children, without neglecting the conflictual and emotional context where the expert investigation is sometimes carried out, that, if it is not adequately evaluated in all its specific connotations, can increase tensions and even produce further problems. Furthermore, a better evaluation of intersubjectivity and relational aspects of minors, solicits a more and more complete analysis of the family system as a whole, without neglecting the role of minors, of their interactions, backgrounds and needs as children. Therefore, it is much more necessary than in the past, a full cooperation and interaction among judges, attorneys at law and, still, among all professional bodies involved in the delicate task of the defence of children, finalized to favour parents’ involvement in the educational process and to allow new models of love expression between parents and children.