Social Justice, Spirituality, and Responsibility to Needs

The core of social justice is examined from a spiritual standpoint, beyond dominant rights-based definitions, towards a “responsibility to needs” understanding, and applied to children whose parents are in conflict during the transition to divorce. Building on Simone Weil's definition of justice as, “seeing that no harm comes to another,” it is argued that in the arena of child custody policy and practice, the discernment of spiritual harm and trauma, and action taken to reduce harm, necessitates first and foremost a focus on children's needs and parental and social institutional responsibilities to those needs. A study of divorced fathers' perspectives on children's best interests reflects such an orientation. A responsibility-to-needs conception of social justice, as opposed to a strictly rights-based approach, is outlined, and applied to the discernment of the “best interests of the child” in divorce

Best interests · Criminology · Discernment · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Harm · Political science · Social responsibility · Sociology · Spirituality · Family Dynamics and Relationships · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Law · Psychology · Reproductive Health and Technologies · Social Psychology

• Child-centred approach to shared parenting

  Open Access•Rafaela Lehtme•Children and Youth Services Review•2024

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• Responsible Fathering

  William J Doherty, Edward F Kouneski et al.•Journal of Marriage and the Family•1998

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