Parenting and multicultural society

Parenthood, understood as that set of practices in which the educational and affective relationship between parents and children takes shape, is certainly one of the forms of expression of the individual in social formations, including that of the family (Article 2 of the Constitution). It is also connected to that particular duty and right of parents to the maintenance and education of their offspring (art. 30 Const.), through which the process of transmitting certain identity values between generations is implemented; and finally, it is also inevitably connected to a parallel duty of the State to support the care of minors and childhood (art. 31 Const.).
Because of these numerous implications, parenting often becomes the object of assessment and/or observation by social and judicial workers: when there are suspicions about the existence of criminally relevant abusive conducts, perpetrated by parents on their children; when it is necessary to investigate the possible state of abandonment of a child, to assess its consequent extra-familial fostering or adoptability or to support cases of ‘weak parenthood' through educational relationship support interventions and/or other social and economic supports; in relation to the assessment of the requirements for family reunification.
This evaluation is a particularly challenging task for both evaluators and evaluated subjects. Parenting is, in fact, subject to constant change even within those groups that belong to an apparently unitary socio-cultural structure. The difficulty of elaborating reference models and parameters of judgement is destined to grow in proportion to the multicultural evolution of society. In fact, more and more frequently, the object of investigation in these assessments are 'mixed' family nuclei, i.e. made up of parental figures from different cultural backgrounds, or entirely foreign families, which, depending on their immigration history, require assistance on different levels and additional caution when subjected to assessment. These nuclei are, in fact, often characterised by a clash between expectations and plans for better living conditions and the numerous difficulties linked to the migration path (linguistic, psychological and social, employment and economic difficulties). Often their members may have experienced traumatic experiences: having been victims of trafficking, slavery; having suffered the loss of loved ones along the migration route. Not infrequently, migrant parents experience the frustration of not being able to transmit their values to their offspring, due to the new cultural context in which they find themselves, and experience parenting in "exile" (Crivellaro, 2021), far from the support of friendly community networks.

Some cultural misunderstandings in the assessment of parenting
A number of legal analyses, but also those by experts in psychiatry and psychotherapy, have highlighted limitations and critical issues in parenting assessment, especially when it interfaces with the 'cultural variable'.
 

 The main 'diagnostic errors' or 'cultural misunderstandings' (Long, 2015) can be observed in proceedings concerning the assessment of the child's state of abandonment by foreign parents and the possible initiation of fostering or adoption procedures. In these contexts, in fact, some forms of ‘weak parenting', mostly due to the difficulties of the migratory experience and/or to the consequent conditions of marginality suffered upon arrival in the host country, as well as some practices that are instead properly traceable to the educational patterns of the cultural context of origin, are often interpreted as pathological elements or in general as attitudes of disinterest towards one's role as a parent.

​Some examples of such equivocal 'bad parenting' may be: the temporary entrusting of one's child to neighbours, in order to carry out one's work and in the absence of other assistance/social support network, often interpreted as lack of interest in the care of the child;[1] excessive attention with respect to the care of the body and the biological needs of the offspring;[2] manifestations of affection common in the culture of origin identified as hypothesis of sexual violence on minors (see in this Guidebook the entry Displays of affection concerning children's genitals and Homage to the child's penis). Other elements reported, especially by experts in psychiatry and psychotherapy as critical in the assessment of the foreign parent, include the focus on the observation of the parent in his/her relationship with the social workers rather than in the parental relationship;[3] the correspondence between the evaluating subject of parenting (worker who observes in first person and relates the facts) and the one providing the support service (worker who implements the service) resulting in a climate of mutual suspicion and a very uncertain outcome of the success of the intervention (Anostini et al., 2021); migrant parents' lack of knowledge of the internal institutional child protection systems and the lack of correct preventive information about them, resulting in misunderstandings and misinterpretations (Voli et al., 2015), especially in cases where judicial intervention, assessment of parental capacities and placement in protective communities (often perceived as places of detention)[4] follow a request for help from the same parent (due to lack of means of subsistence or situations of domestic violence, perhaps); the structuring of encounters between foreign parents and their children in 'neutral spaces', which often provide, according to these scholars, a distorted image of the parental relationship and do not facilitate it (Beneduce, 2014) due, for example, to their limited timeframe and the prohibition against using their language of origin in communication (ignoring the importance of the common language as a moment of connection between parent and child); the pathologisation and medicalisation of difficulties linked to situations of marginalisation or other social and economic variables and not specifically to culture (Taliani, 2012); and the 'brutalisation' of the description of the behaviour of foreign parents.[5]

Some solutions

It is likely that, as already pointed out by many scholars in the legal and psychological/psychiatric fields, the scheme for resolving the cultural misunderstandings encountered should be enriched with interdisciplinary methodologies (anthropology, transcultural psychology and ethnopsychiatry),[6] break away from objectification and medicalisation at all costs (Beneduce, 2014), and move towards investigative tools capable of bringing into dialogue parental practices, culture, migratory experience and possible conditions of marginalisation.
More cross-cultural perspectives on parenting can also be found in the domestic and European jurisprudential framework. In a number of judgments in which the Court of Cassation has ordered the re-examination of the state of abandonment and adoptability of some foreign minors, a number of essential points are reiterated, all oriented to the best interests of the child, respect for his or her private family life (art. 8 ECHR) and the permanence of the child with the family of origin (L. 184/1983 art. 1), among them: the need for a proactive role of the social services in supporting weak forms of parenting,[7] the urgency need for the ascertainment of the child's state of abandonment be based on the criteria of actuality and concreteness, traced back to a "persistence" of the same rather than to a "pre-existence", with the necessary evaluation of the manifestations of will of the parents with respect to the recovery of the relationship with the child, the impossibility of declaring the child abandoned on account of conditions of socio-economic marginalisation, force majeure or in any case not attributable to the parents, nor on the basis of the exclusive existence of certain pathological attitudes/behaviours;[8] the centrality of the time factor (e.g., a certain timeliness in arranging for the parent to be heard during the proceedings, in initiating interventions to support the parental relationship and in efficiently monitoring their progress), especially in cases where the removal of foreign minors and their parents is ordered during the proceedings and their relationship is structured only through meetings in neutral places.[9] Moreover, it is reiterated that the assessment of the state of abandonment/adoptability cannot be based on a comparison between the conditions of the foster family, perhaps of Italian nationality, and that of origin of the foreign child, but must rather be based on the prognosis of the child's future life in his or her own family, on possible interventions and support, going beyond the cultural parental model of the host country.[10]
Still on the subject of parenting and cultural variability, the case law of the ECtHR, precisely on the occasion of a number of sentences to pay damages imposed on Italy for the violation of the right to private and family life of foreign minors removed from their families, has established the need for reinforced protection of the parental relationship in such contexts (Todorova v. Italy, sec. II, 13 January 2009), targeted social assistance (Zhou v. Italy, sec. II, 21 January 2014), the need to clearly inform the foreign parent about his or her substantive and procedural rights (Todorova v. Italy, cit.), and inform about the types of subsidies available to him or her to overcome economic difficulties (Akinnibosun v. Italy, sect. IV, 16 July 2015), ruling that removal is ordered only in exceptional cases and that in the case of meetings in neutral space a certain degree of intimacy between parents and children is in any case guaranteed (Zhou, Todorova cit.).
The weight of the cultural variable in the assessment of parenting skills cannot be addressed through the construction of an ethnic cookbook (Beneduce, 2014) of parenting practices that categorises the behaviours of each culture, but rather through a cross-cultural analysis that takes into account the variables that are grafted onto the parenting journey.

notes

[1] In the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights Zhou v. Italy, sect. II, 21 January 2014 (case of a Chinese working mother, with a form of disability, who is removed from her child, considered in a state of abandonment and who is granted the right to damages against Italy for violation of art. 8 of the ECHR), we report the considerations of the technical consultant in the domestic proceedings, according to whom, the habit of leaving her child with her neighbours during working hours and in the absence of a care network is a delegation of her parental role and symptomatic of the fact that the woman did not have the time to take care of the child because of her work. A similar case is found in the Court of Appeal of Naples, decree 9 November 1995, in "Il diritto di famiglia e delle persone", 1997, p. 587, in which, despite the request for the return of the daughter made by her family of origin, of Ghanaian nationality, it was confirmed that she was entrusted to the Italian couple to whom the same parents had entrusted her from birth. The child was entrusted to the Italian couple not to abandon her but rather on the base of a relationship of trust, in the belief that they would guarantee her assistance during working hours and better domestic accommodation than the natural parents could provide.

[2] In this regard, Taliani (2012) reports how the practice of some mothers of African descent of braiding their hair is identified as a form of obsession rather than an element of education with respect to personal care.

[3] In Cass. Civ., sez. I - 6.02.2013, no. 2780, the state of adoptability of a Nigerian minor child of a woman victim of trafficking is confirmed, also in relation to the poorly collaborative attitude with the social services and her tendency to alienate herself. The poor cooperation between parent and social services is also recalled in the case dealt with by the ECHR in Akinnibosun v. Italy, IV sez., 16.07.2015.

[4] Attempts to flee with the child from the facilities, either to other European countries or to the child's own country of origin, often result from this misunderstanding and are interpreted by evaluators as risky attitudes towards the child, but for the parent this is a strategy to protect the child. On this subject, see Voli (2015).

[5] Some authors report excerpts of reports by social workers in which expressions such as "the lady moves like a beast" are used or, in an attempt to guarantee absolute objectivity of information, the statements of foreign parents are reported as they are pronounced, due to language difficulties, with the use of a mispronounced Italian (petit-nègret) capable of implicitly conveying the image of a parent who is always a child and in difficulty. In this regard, see Taliani (2012).

[6] In Italy, there are centres dedicated to the application and study of the disciplines of transcultural psychology and ethnopsychiatry. Of particular note are the Frantz Fanon Centre in Turin, the Ethnopsychiatric Consultation Centre operating at the Niguarda Hospital in Milan and the Cultural Consultation Service in Bologna.

[7] Civil Cassation, Sec. I - 07/10/2014, no. 21110

[8] Civil Cassation, sec. I - 28/10/2022, no. 31976

[9] Civil Cassation, sect. I - 09/11/2021, no. 32661

[10] Civil Cassation, Sec. I - 22/11/2013, no. 26204