One more step in the centrality of childhoods

This week we have good news that reaffirms and expands the guarantee of rights for children and adolescents. The expansion of LOPIVI (law for the Integral Protection of Children and Adolescents against Violence) has been approved, which will require the listening —the testimony— of children and adolescents in judicial and administrative processes where children and adolescents are involved, regardless of their age.One of the central issues of this expansion is the absolute prohibition of using the concept of parental alienation syndrome (PAS) in judicial proceedings. PAS is a fabricated false syndrome that describes the supposed manipulation that mothers practice with their children with the aim of turning them against their fathers in cases where the fathers have exercised violence against them or their mothers. In short, the use of this false syndrome by the judicial system has served to delegitimize the testimonies of boys and girls who declared that they did not want to be with their fathers due to the harm this situation caused them. Despite the repeated warnings from various professional bodies —especially psychology— about the lack of scientific rigor and gender perspective of this concept, as well as recommendations not to take it into account in the judicial system, the use of PAS and the lack of listening to children in violence proceedings has continued to be a common practice both in Catalonia and in Spain until today.This situation, denounced by dozens of organizations that address sexist violence and by the protective mothers, has persistently and systematically violated the rights of children and adolescents. As we said, this legislative modification will be a great step forward that will curb the existence of these practices; at the same time, it makes us realize —once again— that the judicial system cannot be at the mercy of the ideology of the professionals who embody it. The supposed objectivity of the judiciary is called into question when it becomes evident that sentences are tinged with political convictions and a social model that on many occasions do not respond to the complexity or advances of current society. The times when the family was understood as a patriarchal hierarchy where children could not contradict their parents and were not given credibility, when the man was the head of the familyand had the final word on what happened within the family institution. In short, the children were a Social advances —and, therefore, legislative ones— must always be in line with guaranteeing freedoms and rights for all people without limitation of age or situation. Laws must always be aimed at protecting the most vulnerable. Let us, therefore, congratulate ourselves because social demands regarding childhood are beginning to be heard.