Current issues regarding parental responsibility for the harmful acts of adolescent children or older minors

Abstract

The historical justification of the obligation to respond for children is found in the idea of family cohesion and solidarity, of the ties between parents and children, of the obligation to educate them, provide them with comprehensive training and supervise them, all duties that constitute the basis of liability to third parties for the harmful acts of members of the family group,
especially minor children. However, in this first quarter of the 21st century, it is appropriate to reflect on the regulation of these duties and responsibilities of parents and children in light of the new models of family coexistence, considering
the increasingly independent trajectory of adolescent or older children. of the recognition of their maturity, without forgetting the change of paradigm in relation to the exercise of parental authority that is relegating the role of parents to the
background and which also results in the difficulty of providing children with that education and comprehensive training (which public powers sometimes assume) and the impossibility of adequately monitoring them. All of this makes it difficult to
fulfill some little or poorly learned filial duties and turns the exercise of parental authority into a complex, arduous and, at times, “risky” function, which transforms the responsibility of parents for the harmful acts of their children. children in a
responsibility that is far from the concept of guilt and closer to quasi-objective responsibility.