FACING THE CRISIS OF THE FAMILY IN THE NAME OF THE CHILDREN:
FIRST COMPARATIVE SURVEY ON CHILDREN CUSTODY IN EUROPE
Strasbourg, 24 oct2013
“IN THE NAME OF THE CHILDREN OR THE SOCIAL COST OF THE DIVORCE IN A BOOK””
Avv. Simone Pillon
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m Simone Pillon, italian lawyer, specialized in family law, family mediator and member of the national board of “Forum of family associations”. This is an italian second level association founded in 1993 and composed of over 50 family associations and over 3 million people from all around Italy.
Our mission is to protect and sustain families in all the issues that they can find in their lives.
One of that risks, and often the most dangerous, against which families of our century have to struggle is couple crisis and divorce.
By the way we are here to talk about child and youth care after the divorce of their parents.
In international scientific literature is well known the relationship between children’s wellness and maintaining strong relations with both parents and their own families. Veryinteresting are in thissense the works “Marriage, divorce and children’sadjustement” by R. Emery (Beverly Hills 1999), or from Italy “Le conseguenze della separazione e del divorzio sui figli: spunti di ricerca sulle esigenze dei bambini” (L. Melina, C.C. Anderson “L’olio sulle Ferite” Cantagalli Siena 2009).
Instead is often misunderstood another very important issue: the indispensability of the father in children’s growth and education. One of the most important works in this area is the book “Father, absent unacceptable” by the italian psychologist Claudio Risè. This book is very important especially now in the times of “gender mainstreaming”, for remember to all the irreplaceable contribution of father in the lives of children.
Well, we can start.
In the beginning of my speech I would like to tell you two real stories from my personal experience of lawyer and then we will quickly examine the actual situation of child welfare an at the end we will imagine some purposes for future.
The first story is about Giulio.
Giulio was 10 years old when his father was falsely charged by his wife of sexual abuse. He was acquitted (and his wife was convicted for calumny) but his son has not seen the father for several months during trial. Now Giulio is 16 and is suffering for a lot of psychological distress like anorexia anddepression. Doctor who is treating him argues that the disease comes from the lack of the father figure.
The second story is about Franco
Franco was 4 years old when his father left family and went to live with his new girlfriend. His mother – very upset for the treason - would have liked to accuse his husband of sexual abuse and other crimes and tried to prevent the father saw his son.
However she found a careful lawyer who advised her to seek a psychological treatment for overcome the pain of abandonment.
She did, and she understood that he could not vent his anger by preventing the son to see his father.
Now Franco is 8 years old, he sees his father 4 days a week and is a well balanced child.
Two similar stories but with a very different end.
We have to remember that conflicts between parents are paid by the children.
Following this argument we can forecast that more and more European citizens of the future are likely to be low-balanced due to the internal conflicts of their families.
We have the duty to prevent this dangerous trend.
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You can easily find stories like these in the book named “In the name of children”, “Nelnomedeifigli” written by our friend, Vittorio Vezzetti.
By the way, they are not “confortable” matters, ‘cause they are very very far from the current opinions about family but most of all, far from old femministtheories and gender ones that nowadays have become the prevalent thinking.
They constitute a so shared and usual way of thinking that no editorial producer has accepted to publish the book, and you should wonder and believe that this book has been sold in over 20.000 (twenty thousands) copies in just few months. We’ve just heard about the studies conducted by Dott. Vezzetti that times of custody and especially joint custody are completely unbalanced and they are in this way more or less in all Europe.
The “custodial” and parental figure who suffers more ‘cause of this kind of situation is the figure of the father and all European children taken into the vortex of separation and parental divorce are risking to lose definitively their balance and their psychological and social stability.
What are the current remedies for this kind of situation?
- Informational and educationprograms
- Medichal and Therapeuthicalprograms
- Substain and supportprograms
Between these last ones we can name in particolar:
- Family mediation
- Help groups (they are Family groups conferences where to face problems together)
- Groupsofspeech
The points of force and the limits of these remedies are famous: family mediation is too often conducted by people who are not so prepared or, however, not so able to work together with other specialized people. Moreover, family mediation is still considered as a risk and a peril from lawyer lobbies who frighten it, and the result of this fight in Italy has been the removal of mediation from legislation.
Groups of help have been experimented and have improved in particular in Anglo-saxon countries and they are supported by the widespread literature and by uses and customs of people (parent training programs and behaviour problems di J. Barlow, or parenting, schooling and children’s behaviour di B. L. Hudson) in this way reaching good results.
Groups of speech for children involved in separation and family breaking down are quite spread also in Italy and other countries and they have been reaching good and hopeful results (Cfr. “I gruppi di parola” C. Marzotto – Milano, or “Supporting children who have experienced parental divorce”- by L. Kramer and others).
European Institutions should make new proposal and should give new advices for the future, advices to get into a new European family mainstreaming, who cares about citizens of the future starting from families of today.
- As first target we have to remember that the best thing is that children can grow up in a family composed by mum and dad who love each other and stay together and try to do their best to grow up them together. The first answer to give is to sustain the unity of couples:before the marriage we have to prepare the couples to marriageand after marriage, we have to prevent the crisis.
- Any other solution would be a “remedy” , an imperfect remedy, even if lots of things can be done to prevent and make easier children sufferings during separation and divorce. The second issue to front in children’s interest is the problem on how to limit, or to cut the inter family conflictduring separation.
- The third but not last thing isthat legislation of all European countries has to order equivalent times for children to spend with both parents; it shouldn’t be counted as the same time to spend with each one, but it should be considered as significant times who would make the children able to receive the same quality, or better the same kind of education from mum and from dad.
A billthat will be presented in a few days at the Italian Parliament – written thank to our contribute – goes towards this direction.
We found the best practices from all around Europe and we put them in that bill (for example parenting plan or equally shared parenting, or counseling for mediation or conciliation) in the name of true co-parenting.
Also Europe can do lots of things in this sense, remembering to all member states that co-parentingis the right of each child and this is the way to have a better Europe for tomorrow.
Thankyou.
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