Cassation

No parental suspension if father and mother struggle to understand coming out

For the judges, an extreme solution adopted in the absence of mockery, physical or psychological abuse based only on the inadequacy of the moment to understand

by Patrizia Maciocchi

10 December 2025

Aggiungi Il Sole 24 Ore
ai preferiti su Google

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Parental responsibility cannot be suspended parental responsibility because father and mother have difficulty understanding the coming out of their daughter, in the absence ofa real rejection ormistreatment. The Court of Cassation upheld the appeal of the two parents against the decision of the Juvenile Court, endorsed by the Court of Appeal, to declare them deprived of parental responsibility over their 13-year-old daughter, who had been moved to a community.

The Blue Telephone Call

The court case had started from a phone call by the child to the child protection hotline, at the end of the epochal lockdown. The young girl, not feeling understood by her mother and in general by both parents, had reported to the operators her psychological malaise. She reported that her parents, who were not married and no longer cohabiting at the time, often quarrelled and had difficulty, on the one hand, in understanding her emotional needs and, on the other hand, in supporting her in the affirmation of her sexual orientation, since she confessed that she felt attraction for both sexes.

In the meetings with the social services, the minor had said, in particular, that she felt misunderstood and unaccepted in her own identity and affective orientation, especially by her mother, who was not very empathetic in dealing with her daughter's difficulties and described her as a nervous and irritable person. As for the father, he was to blame for perhaps being too passive and not being enough of a shield both in protecting her from the couple conflict in which she was triangulated and in supporting her and giving her concrete answers after coming out.

Community Placement

In this context, the girl had welcomed and relieved theplacement in the community. For the Supreme Court, however, the community and estrangement from the parents was anextreme way and not the only possible one. The Supreme Court recalls, in fact, that the judge may pronounce the forfeiture of parental responsibility in cases where the parent violates or neglects his or her duties or abuses his or her powers, whenever this violation, omission or abuse has resulted in serious prejudice for the child. And for the ermines this is not the case.

"The motivational path accompanying the Court of Appeal's decree," reads the ruling, "appears unsuitable to support such a drastic and radical decision as the forfeiture of both parents from parental responsibility. The Court of Cassation also chastised the court-appointed expert who had indulged in "moralising considerations", describing the behaviour of the two parental figures as sui generis for the mere fact that "the father slept at the ex-girlfriend's house despite the fact that they were already separated, thus putting in the background the appreciable intention of not depriving the daughter of the continuity of the relationship with both parents". For the Supreme Court, there was also a lack of a new hearing, even indirectly, of the child who was now 14 years old.

No derision or denigration

The irreversible measure was also adopted in the absence of any action to facilitate a mediation and a meeting schedule. "It is worth emphasising that the contested decree did not point out at any point in the meagre grounds a problem of actual hindrance of the child in her sexual orientation. The father's and mother's forfeiture of parental responsibility is not based - the Court emphasises - on episodes of ill-treatment nor on forms of psychological or psychological violence.

"The decree of the Court of Appeal does not refer, in any way, toauthoritarian conduct of the father or mother exercised throughdepreciating derision of the affective attraction felt by the daughter or through the imposition of obstacles to the frequentation of friendships or through the manifestation of feelings of aversion or denigration or through conduct aimed at exercising the ius corrigendi - the judges write - to induce her to make a "choice" in conformity with the parents' expectations".

Assuming that she had always had 'a good relationship with dad because he is milder and calmer', the minor had confided to her mother, a few weeks before the phone call to the child protection hotline, 'that she felt attraction for both sexes'. Her mother had 'remained silent, the next day she pretended nothing had happened'. While she had 'expected a more understanding attitude from him'. She had then spoken to her father about it and reported that she had 'found more understanding on his part', so much so that she had expressed the desire to 'move in with dad, meeting mum from time to time'.

The parent-child relationship

The Supreme Court goes into theparent-child relationship to remind us that 'one is a parent of children, one is responsible to children. Thus, the duties and powers, although they always and necessarily exist, of parents, are declined in terms of the relationship and are defined therein'. A coessential part of parental responsibility is the due respect for the natural inclinations, including sexual inclinations, and aspirations of the son or daughter.

"The family, in the plurality of its models and also in the variety of its concrete experiences, is a fundamental place for the formation, growth and development of the person, because in it and through it the adolescent, who cannot think of himself in an isolated and self-sufficient manner, perceives the sense and dimension of the other, planning and imagining himself together with the other members of the family, in a community of affection and solidarity. The family - underlines the Court of legitimacy - is a place for sharing not only serene times, but also difficulties, because of its capacity to generate, naturally or, if necessary, with support, paths for overcoming them'.

The decision contested by the parents rests, however, simply on a difficulty in understanding and sharing. The child's parents, in an already problematic situation resulting from their not living together and the climate between them not always idyllic, felt confused and did not know how to behave or how to deal with the complexity of the situation concerning their daughter.

"One is faced, in other words, with a difficulty to (not a refusal to) accompany the daughter in the search for and progressive affirmation of her identity; one is in the presence, in short, of an emotional distance from her needs. In this context, the refusal to continue living with her parents, which arose in a moment of difficulty in family relations triggered by the daughter's attempt to find answers with her parents and in the frustration of seeing them unavailable as they were involved, in turn, in their conflicts, on the one hand, was not sufficiently verified in the origin in its genuineness and possible external influences," reads the judgment, "and on the other hand it was not balanced and compared - as the Office of the Attorney General of the Supreme Court accurately pointed out - with the right and interest of the child itself in preserving and strengthening the bond with its parents and family unit. Such a balancing should have been specifically calibrated and tailored to the measure of the case, in relation to the circumstances but also to the concrete maturity of the daughter".

The Court of Cassation therefore annuls the contested decision with referral and asks the Court of Merit to identify whether there is "objectively malicious or dysfunctional conduct on the part of the parents, not being able to be based simply on apodictic judgments entrusted to stereotyped phrases or on secondary profiles that do not grasp in essence, the sense of an office strictly functional to the interests of the child and to the formation of his or her personality and are not in themselves revelatory of a closure towards the other or of an interference that precludes the possibility of reconnecting the relationship".