1. Can the category 'culture' (or religion) be used?	​Yes, the category culture can be used: the way of parenting, both in terms of behaviour and of emotions/feelings associated with the role, is learnt within the socialisation group, where it is transmitted intergenerationally. However, it is important to bear in mind that it is not possible to specifically identify a fixed and unequivocal relationship between certain parenting methods and a certain culture, as other complementary and variable factors come into play, such as the socio-economic conditions of the family in question, possible personal situations/fragilities, traumatic events related to a possible migration pathway (e.g. exploitation in trafficking; loss of family members in the course of migration), and the fact that the family is not the only one to have a specific relationship with the culture; exploitation in trafficking; loss of family members in the migration route; losses inherent in migration itself: loss of family, friends and community support; loss of ease of communication in one's mother tongue; compulsory changes in eating habits and customs; loss of multiple connections with one's social network) that influence these patterns. Particularly with regard to the idea of parenthood, it is crucial to take into account that the cultural element is indeed a component to be considered in the assessment of the subject in question, but also a starting point/an implicit observation lens for the assessor himself/herself (judges, social workers, psychologists, etc.). The latter too are, in fact, embedded in a specific cultural context that proposes a specific model of parenting and family, which, however, does not constitute a universal standard model.
2. Description of the cultural (or religious) practice and group.	Parenthood is treated in this Guidebook as an articulated and composite cultural practice, encompassing all those behaviours, attitudes and feelings that a person engages in when raising a child. The intention is not to propose a single definition of parenthood, but rather to describe certain legally relevant behaviours linked to this concept. Parenthood, in short, is understood here as a cluster (bundle of behaviours) whose selection prism is mostly derived from case-law and social casuistry. From this case history and the numerous testimonies from the social work sector, which is directly involved in the management of migrant families, it is possible to draw an illustrative, though not exhaustive, breakdown of parenting-related and culturally influenced behaviour and practices:   1) Parenting practices implemented because they are deeply rooted in the culture of origin; they are seen by the parent as the best way of exercising their parental function and transmitting the heritage of their values, especially in a context of being far from their homeland; they are sometimes seen as an expression of bad parenting or pathologised by the majority culture. One thinks of fostering practices within an extended family or where the child is perceived as more autonomous than Italian children. For example, the presence and importance of the role of parental figures are not the same in all societies, leaving room for other figures involved in the growth and upbringing of offspring. In a Tanzanian population, for example, after weaning there is a detachment of the son/daughter from the family of origin. The son/daughter is taken into the care of the maternal grandmother, creating a lasting union (until 6-7 for boys, until marriage for girls). The grandmother performs educational and training functions, which we usually associate with parental figures. In a post-migration context, the mother who entrusts the child entirely to the grandmother could be seen as failing in her parental duties. In some groups it is common for older children to be entrusted with younger children because the child is deemed fully capable of caring for younger siblings. The majority culture might see such behaviour as child abandonment. Not only in non-Western contexts, but also within the neighbouring and familiar European landscape there are care behaviours very different from those in Italy. For example, in Sweden and Denmark, children are let out in the snow or rain despite cold temperatures, or it often happens that babies are left in prams outdoors to take their 'naps' (unattended), while the family stays warm at home, as it is thought to temper and be good for the child’s health and wellbeing. Similarly, given the high social trust in these societies, it is common that if parents go to a restaurant or bar, the child's pushchair is left outside unattended. This group of practices seen as problematic by the Italian majority culture could also include: forms of cuddling of children such as kissing and caressing on the genitals with no sexual intent, given for the purpose of greeting, celebration of virility, total and unconditional acceptance of the child (see the entries Displays of affection concerning the children’ genitals  and Homage to child’s penis in this Guidebook); the typical practice of some mothers from Africa of "braiding" their daughters' hair, a laborious and often tiring practice for the child, not to be identified as an unjustified obsession, but as a real way of teaching care for one's own body; the different ways of showing affection (behaviour considered too affectionate or behaviour considered too avoidant); the emotional expressiveness (e.g. the tone of voice that always appears angry, but which belongs to a mode of expression that the child does not perceive as aggressive because it is a cultural trait that the child is perfectly capable of contextualising); a strong reliance on traditional medicine or religion; the different organisation of roles in child-rearing based on gender; the involvement of children in their parents' work (which could conflict with child labour regulations); ways of weaning children off with foods that we consider 'too' spicy. Each society, including our own, therefore develops parenting models that it deems fit for purpose, with gender and/or parental role models and practices that cannot be universally defined.   2) Practices that are not strictly cultural, but mostly constitute a response to certain difficulties in parenting arising mainly from the fact that it is experienced in a different cultural context and from a distance from one's own community, with a strong influence of biographical and economic variables, and elements related to the lived experience of migration. These variables are sometimes culturalised by legal and social workers. This second group could include the particular attachment relationship between mother and child, sometimes considered 'possessive'; aggressive or closed attitudes towards social workers with respect to attempts at assistance or, on the contrary, attitudes of total delegation of one's parental functions to care facilities; temporary entrusting of one's children to neighbours or others with whom a relationship of trust has been established; intolerance towards parenting education courses or towards the restrictive way in which meetings are restricted (often very brief, carried out under the strict control of operators and not necessarily in the parents' language of origin); mistrust of state social and health institutions, especially in relation to maternity or to pathological treatment of one's own children or of the parent; excessive trust in spiritual and religious systems; other and various behaviours indicative of simple inexperience with motherhood/parenting (bath temperature, accidental falls of children, etc.).
​3. Embedding the individual practice in the broader cultural (or religious) system.	The different models and approaches to parenting are part of a broader cultural context that guides and defines the very idea of the family and the way children are raised and educated. These contexts are obviously different depending on the country/culture under consideration, but also vary on the basis of further, more personal and individual factors (e.g. social class, level of education, etc.). Family, and kinship more generally, cannot be regarded as institutions based simply on 'nature', as rules and different family forms are historically and culturally variable. Relationships and kinship ties are culturally constructed and therefore susceptible to change both in their foundations, from biology to social and history, and in the specific rights, duties and obligations that constitute the relationships. The idea of family is a socio-cultural construct and the one used in Western countries cannot account for the intricate web of relationships that exists between parenting practices, relationships between spouses and siblings, vertical and horizontal relationships between relatives, marital ties, marriage contracts and domestic arrangements in other nations. It is important to bear in mind, for instance, that many people do not necessarily aspire to a nuclear family model. If within the vast set comprising different family types we find a multiplicity of different and heterogeneous solutions, its boundaries therefore appear blurred. Alongside the 'Italian' model, which is also constantly evolving and changing, and itself characterised by considerable pluralism, we find today very different family models and relationships, such as the extended family, kafala (see the entry kafala in this Guidebook), polygamy (i.e. families with many spouses), parental care and family relationships that show how the single-nuclear family model is a drop in the ocean of the 'family' institution. The diversity of human experience shapes human relationships in many different ways, and cultural background is therefore a powerful basis for conceiving parental norms differently and for implementing different practices in child-rearing. In addition to other institutions, such as the family and kinship systems, parenting practices must be included in the broader system of 'personal culture', i.e. the way the individual incorporates his or her cultural system into his or her biography. In the area of parenting, therefore, rather than attempting to frame individual educational behaviour within a rigid and stereotypical cultural categorisation system, it is surely more useful to enrich the scheme of enquiry through an additional lens that captures the multiple nuances of the cultural variable and its influences on both educational practice and the observer's judgement. Maintaining a critical and non-rigid gaze can thus make it possible to grasp the complexity and fluidity of family relationships, shedding light on behaviour that is sometimes difficult to understand. According to this perspective, for example, what is often referred to as the 'possessive' relationship between mother and child, aggressive or closed attitudes towards social workers, as well as intolerance towards parenting education courses or restrictive meeting arrangements, could be traced back to parents' fear of losing those children, on whom they have placed the expectation of a better life, or of leaving them to the upbringing of strangers. In some countries, for instance, the vision of parenthood/maternity care is not necessarily represented by the state or by strangers, but much more by the family (mother-in-law, mother, grandmothers, elderly women in the community, etc.). Moreover, for some Nigerian trafficked women, it sometimes emerged that motherhood is associated with a meaning of completion and/or redemption, experienced as a way to "erase" the past of prostitution.
4. Is the practice essential (to the survival of the group), compulsory or optional?	Since parenting does not consist of a one-size-fits-all practice, it depends on which practice one considers. There are cases in which the parent feels that he or she is a bad parent if he or she does not adopt certain behaviours that should, therefore, be considered obligatory: for example, punishing the child who misbehaves; transmitting a religious belief, sending the child to attend religious schools; not separating from the child or entrusting the child only to trusted family members until he or she reaches a certain age (e.g. Roma groups); not sending the child to day care as it is seen as a practice of neglect and abandonment towards the child (e.g. Roma groups). It should, in any case, be borne in mind that even when adherence to a particular model of caring for and bringing up one's children is something that is based on an optional decision, parents generally consider such a model to be the best and most appropriate for that purpose, going so far as to consider other parenting approaches as wrong, problematic or negative.
​5.     Is the practice shared by the group, or is it contested?	The various practices that constitute parenting are generally shared by the group to which they belong, subject to endocultural divergences and the plurality of educational methods within the same culture (e.g. more permissive and stricter parents). It should, however, be borne in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all model, so that even within the same group we can often find different parenting/family approaches.
​6.     How would the average person belonging to that culture (or religion) behave?	The average parent would follow the dictates of the culture from which he or she learned how to parent, particularly if convinced that this corresponds to the child's best interests. Adaptations to the new context of insertion are possible either for strategic reasons (e.g. avoiding leaving the child alone at home with older siblings to avoid losing parental authority) or out of a conviction that the behaviour of the majority is equally beneficial to the child (e.g. African mothers abandoning the practice of carrying the child in their arms in favour of the pram, which other women regard as a tool that separates the mother from the child and prevents the child from seeing the world, which is instead possible from the mother's arms).
​7.     Is the subject sincere?	For the purpose of a better assessment of parenting skills, especially when related to foreign parents, it would be worth investigating:   the actual existence of the particular vision of parenting and that behaviour in the culture of origin; the individual's migration experience (what motivated the individual to migrate, whether it was an intentional migration or one that they would have preferred to avoid, the social networks that were left behind in the land of origin, the role of these networks in supporting parenthood, any losses during the migration journey, any incidents of trafficking and exploitation, violence suffered and other traumatic experiences); the context of family-environment relations (existence or non-existence of reference points in the same community of origin; analysis of links with educational and other institutions); spirituality (strong links to religion or certain forms of belief in traditional medicine are part of the mother’s cultural inheritance, not mere 'mystical delusions', rather they are a way for subjects to accept, process and cope with otherwise uncontrollable circumstances); the differences perceived by the parent between experiencing parenthood here or in their community of origin; the different modes of communication between parents and children, which may be different by culture or even by context (a foreign parent might be more authoritarian in a context different from his or her home context because he or she does not perceive it as 'safe' for his or her children, lacking, from his or her own perspective, a set of social support networks).
8.     The search for the cultural equivalent: the translation of the minority practice into a corresponding (Italian) majority practice. ​	Within the Italian context itself, it is not possible to identify a single parenting model that is universally normative and found in all families. Differences between family models, communication modes and expressions of emotion between different parts of Europe and Italy, as well as between different urban centres (city - countryside) are still very evident today. It is certainly necessary to highlight how some practices criticised today because they were carried out by foreigners, were also particularly widespread in the majority culture: it was common to bring one's own children to workplaces, especially if they were private or family businesses (restaurants, accommodation facilities, etc.). Often this involvement in small, mostly symbolic operations was a great source of pride for children who felt part of a whole and felt they had a role. This practice has now disappeared in urban Italy, partly as a result of the criminalisation of child labour, but it persists in Greece, for example, where the tourism industry sees, especially in the summer, the whole family mobilised to run the typical tavern, including minors under 16. The practice of temporarily entrusting minors to relatives and neighbours was also widespread in Italy. From an intercultural point of view, aimed at bringing majority and minority into dialogue around child-rearing practices, conversely, some Italian parenting practices that are widespread and accepted today could be discussed on the level of the violation of values and rights of the child by minorities: often for work reasons, Italian parents leave their children for many hours in educational institutions, in other hosting contexts (oratories, playgrounds, summer camps), or they tend to spend all day at work, reducing the time spent at home to a minimum. These, too, are forms of delegation of parenting skills, sometimes due to necessity, but also partly due to a precise educational choice that wants minors always engaged in potentially productive activities in line with the values of capitalist neo-liberalism and of a competitive society that looks at the child for what he/she will be able to do and produce when he/she grows up and is concerned about making him/her function socially.
9.      Does the practice cause harm? ​	The requirement of harm could be fairly used in a balancing test as long as it is not taken to extremes. Forcing one's daughter to have her hair braided may correspond, for example, for a mother from a given African country to a form of body care education. It certainly generates temporary damage on the child that may result in opposition, crying, screaming, expressions of pain. However, it is very common for other practices involving elementary rules of hygiene to give rise to identical reactions (most young children detest 'washing' or in particular washing their hair). Nevertheless, nobody thinks in Italy to denounce parents who impose daily showers to their children for being obsessed with hygiene or for causing psychological and physical trauma to the child. In other practices, on the other hand, the harm may be entirely absent (temporary fostering by trusted persons, symbolic participation in the work activities of one's parents); on the contrary, they may lead to the growth of relations between the child, the parent and the new host community. Some practices (e.g. ius corrigendi through beatings) produce harm and should be discouraged. In determining the harm caused to the child by a parenting practice, this should, however, always be compared with the harm the child would suffer as a result of being removed from the family. It should, in fact, be taken into account that a high level of harm in parenting is presented by cases of estrangement, especially when justified by an equivocal interpretation of certain parenting practices or by forms of parenting that are questionable, but temporary and resolvable through structured help that takes culture into account. Expulsion from parents severs the family bond and, especially in the case of foreign minors, introduces the minor into another cultural context, often making him or her unable to absorb certain features of his or her culture of origin, generating forms of incomprehension and hindering any communion, even in the brief moments of encounter they may be afforded, with their family of origin.
​10.  What impact does the minority practice have on the culture, constitutional values, and rights of the (Italian) majority?	The parenting expectations of a given society are strongly influenced by the cultural context of reference and the attachment models proposed and accepted in that context. The majority culture perceives its own conception of family and parenthood as the best existing, replicable in every context, and vice versa the others as retrograde, cruel or the result of psychological problems (personality disorders above all), often untreatable, and strongly influencing the ability to transmit educational models appropriate to society. It is not conceived that the most widespread educational and parenting models derive from precise historical and social events, as well as from the socio-economic structuring of society, and not from a natural evolution 'in the right direction'. Some migrants' parenting practices impact above all on the majority society's vision of childhood, which is totally child-centred, centred on play and carefreeness, but are also considered detrimental to the values of dignity, freedom, self-determination and psycho-physical integrity. In the legal sphere, they are often given weight in the evaluation of parental competence, in proceedings concerning the declaration of the state of abandonment and/or adoptability, leading to the child's removal from his or her parents, temporary or definitive, or to a structuring of the parental relationship reduced to a minimum through meetings in protected facilities. Law No. 184 of 1983 and the jurisprudential interpretation of its rules on adoption and the state of abandonment, however, establishes that the child's overriding interest is to grow up in his or her family of origin, unless dire sources of harm are identified. According to these principles, the assessment of parental adequacy should not include comparisons between the economic conditions of foster families and their original families, nor should it stigmatise hypotheses of 'weak parenting' that needs to be supported by the social welfare system. On the subject of fostering, adoption and the state of abandonment, it has been repeatedly stated that the persistence of the state of abandonment must be assessed on the concrete and current conduct of the parents rather than on past facts. Just as certain practices in their equivocal interpretation are deemed to affect the child's rights to psycho-physical integrity, health and education, removal from the family unit potentially in turn causes damage to the child's psycho-physical integrity, cultural (art. 2 Const.), religious and spiritual identity - often impossible to cultivate when the child is entrusted to Italian families at a tender age and destined to meet the biological parents only for short periods of time - as well as to the right to private and family life (art. 8 ECHR).
​11.   Does the practice perpetuate patriarchy?	In some cases, there may be educational/parenting models that have a different determination of gender roles in the family of origin compared to the host society model: for example, giving more allowance to the male child and less to the female child; dividing domestic tasks unequally by having only the female children do the cleaning and tidying up of the house and relieving the male children; feeding the male children more than the female children. Apart from cases in which discrimination results in situations of humiliation and suffering for girls, it should be borne in mind that diversified parenting practices in the care and upbringing of male and female children do not always correspond to patriarchal logics: in fact, they may serve to prepare young people for their future gender roles, reproductive functions and to make them familiar with certain activities (e.g. differentiated games between boys and girls).
12.  What good reasons does the minority present for continuing the practice? The criterion of an equally valid life choice.	The different parenting behaviours practised by minorities are perceived by them as the most appropriate in order to raise and educate their offspring, leading them to consider different practices as incorrect or detrimental. Furthermore, the family, and thus different parenting models, are fundamental in transmitting the shared values of the group to which they belong to an intergenerational level. Often, in migratory contexts, the upbringing of sons/daughters according to the model proposed by one's own community is perceived as fundamental in order to maintain a strong bond with one's own cultural experience.