F. Dolto Association is proposing this conference in order to reflect upon transformations of family ties which have deep effects on the psychic development of children in contemporary society. The phenomenon of a growing isolation of the nuclear family, and more often a single parent one, highlights a form of decline of the paternal function, along with a transformation of the maternal one, as well as an instability of sexual identities. The timing and the forms of the formative experiences the child encounters in his/her relation with others are rapidly changing.

While we are loosing many of the rites of passage which once marked our psychic and social life, new ones are either still uncertain or not emerging at all. What is replacing the order of the traditional family, which in its own way, helped children in facing traumatic experiences linked to inevitable losses and separations?

Is there a new structure supporting both the working mothers, who lack the safety net of the extended family and children and babies who have to face their primary separation from these mothers?

Is there any form of caring for all those children, now mostly left to themselves, who undergo that most painful but frequent rite of passage, the process of their parents’ divorce?

Is there any kind of safety-net for the neglect and marginalization of immigrant families and their children?

There are gaps in the structure of today’s family and society that make the child’s need for adaptation more and more onerous for the human psyche. This is fertile ground, even for standard or well-to-do families, for the suffering caused by new silent symptoms spreading in contemporary era: depressive syndromes, feeding problems, addictions, juvenile delinquency.

The Dolto Association would like to present an initiative which it has carried out for several years in Rome, a “centre for the prevention of psycho-social disturbances in children” or “casa verde”, following the model of the “maison verte”, created by the French analyst Françoise Dolto in 1979 in Paris. A space for socialization and listening of the messages children and adults address to each other while playing, chatting and being together. We believe that the “maison verte” offers new alternative perspectives in the areas of child therapy and the prevention of mental illness in today’s society.
 
The Association would like to explore these themes, not alone but together with other specialists in the field, to reflect upon new alternative forms of intervention, privileging speech, listening to and welcoming children and adults who raise them.
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