”Parental skills” are basic to any intervention for the protection of young people. However, the concept itself is controversial and indeterminate, subject to interpretation by a wide range of specialists, with an equally wide range of training backgrounds and methodologies. Nevertheless, although the evidentiary weight of the expert assessments of behaviours has been questioned by many legal scholars, the courts systematically continue to call on them. This failure to examine the skills and working methods of such experts has resulted in the formalization of a system of benchmarks that has been built up insidiously over time, creating a context that leads legal activity to contribute to the upholding of social inequalities.

• parental skills
• expert assessment
• courts
• mother
• mental health

https://journals.openedition.org/efg/532