Tutela dei minori e nuove transizioni familiari

Abstract. The Author claims that the protection of minors in our contemporary society is primarily concerned with the changes in family transitions. As a matter of fact, family transitions loose the normative regulations they had in the past. The emergent effect is an overall increase in the risks and uncertainties that minors have to face. What does it happen when the relative stability of the transitional stages that families meet wither away? What are the consequences on children? What kind of interventions (social policies, personal social services, etc.) addressed to minors can be envisaged in a society which configures family transitions as an unbound morphogenesis of its relations? The social condition of minors becomes an unceasingly transition due to many factors, but basically because the societal morphogenesis makes the reflexive abilities of the families more and more problematic. The paper suggests that, in order to protect children, we have to go beyond the conditional and muddling through models of the past. We need to adopt a new model of analysis and intervention, called ODG-system, which is relational and reflexive. It consists in developing the relational reflexivity of the family as a social system able to cope with children’s needs.