Abstract

In 1985 Richard Gardner theorized Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), a ‘mental disorder’ whereby children unjustifiably reject one parent because of the other parent’s influence. Despite the resistance of the scientific community, PAS came into legal discourse and trials, through the designation by judges of experts to aid in making custody determinations. While it is known that the use of PAS also occurs in Italian court rooms, research on this topic is still underdeveloped. This study fills this gap by analyzing 32 decisions of the Italian Civil Supreme Court, given between 2003-2023, with a jusfeminist and socio-legal perspective. The research aims to understand how the Italian justice system, over the years and in cases where PAS has been invoked, has “operationalizedµ the guarantee of the best interest of the child and his/her right to co-parenting, with particular attention to the construction of models of motherhood and fatherhood. Our results show that Italian courts continue to use PAS, even if the Supreme Court has progressively recognized the illegitimacy of its use as the main reason behind the courts’ decisions. Moreover, from our data, it emerges that this change in Supreme Court’s position is a consequence of the mothers’ actions and so is a bottom-up process. On the side of the models of parenthood, it emerges that mothers are responsible for the family unit even after the breakdown of the marital relationship and for the maintenance and smooth functioning of the father-child relationship. So, while the mothers and their parenting abilities are deeply scrutinized by judges and technical consultants, mainly psychologists, fathers and their paternal role – both before the end of the marital relationship and in maintaining the relationship with the children after – are absent in courts’ decisions. Indeed, fathers appear only as the injured party in their right to co-parenting, which is thus transmuted from a child right into a paternal one.