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The Italian family from the 1960s to the present

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Chiara Saraceno
Chiara Saraceno*
Affiliation:
Facoltà di Scienze Politiche, Università di Torino, Via S. Ottavio 50, 10124 Torino, Italy E-mail: chiara.saraceno@unito.it
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Summary

The family in Italy lies at the centre of an apparent paradox. On the one hand, it appears stronger in its traditional form based on marriage and on intergenerational solidarity than in most European countries. The normal way of living for couples is marriage, marriage instability is lower than the European average, and births out of wedlock are scarce. On the other hand, with its low fertility and long permanence of children in their parents’ household, Italy appears to be a country where the forming of new families and the reproduction of families is most difficult. This article explores the reasons for this paradox, many of which lie in the persistent gender division of labour and in the lack of supportive family policies. At the same time the article shows that despite the apparent stability of the family many changes are under way, some of them dating back to the early 1960s: not only because of fertility decline, but also due to women's changing patterns of behaviour and expectations.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 9 , Issue 1: Special Issue: gender and the private sphere in Italy since 1945 , May 2004 , pp. 47 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. See Saraceno, Chiara, ‘The Italian Family: Paradoxes of Privacy’, in Prost, Antoine and Vincent, Gerard (eds), A History of Private Life. Riddles of Identity in Modern Times , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991, pp. 451–502.Google Scholar

2. The gender gap in schooling in Italy started to close up in the 1970s, about a decade later than in most industrialized countries. However, the younger female cohorts in the 1950s and 1960s had already begun to improve their level of education relative to previous generations, particularly compared with their mothers: De Lillo, Antonio, ‘La mobilità sociale assoluta’, Polis , II, 1, 1988, pp. 19–52.Google Scholar

3. Stella, Simonetta Piccone, La prima generazione , Franco Angeli, Milan, 1993.Google Scholar

4. See Segalen, Martine, Sociologie de la famille , Colin, Paris, 1981.Google Scholar

5. See Barbagli, Marzio, Provando e riprovando , Il Mulino, Bologna, 1990; Barbagli, Marzio and Saraceno, Chiara, Separarsi in Italia, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1998; ISTAT, L'instabilità coniugale in Italia. Evoluzione ed aspetti strutturali, ISTAT, Rome, 2001.Google Scholar

6. This means that each generation barely reproduces itself. At present, fertility in all European countries is below substitution level, with fewer than 2 children per woman on average. But Italy, with 1.2 children per woman, has one of the lowest rates.Google Scholar

7. See EUROSTAT, Les Jeunes de l'Unione Européenne , Luxembourg, 1997; Sabbadini, Linda Laura, ‘Modelli di formazione e organizzazione delle famiglie’, in Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, Dipartimento per gli Affari Sociali, Atti del Convegno di Bologna, Le famiglie interrogano le politiche sociali, 29–30–31 marzo 1999, Poligrafico dello Stato, Rome, 2000.Google Scholar

8. It should be added that even those young persons who live by themselves as students are mostly supported by their parents. Moreover, even those who eventually marry are often financially assisted by their parents in paying for housing. Leonini, Luisa, in her ‘La trasmissione dell'eredità’, in Barbagli, Marzio and Saraceno, Chiara (eds), Lo stato delle famiglie in Italia , Il Mulino, Bologna, 1997, pp. 193–204, has also found that an increasing proportion of wealth transmission from one generation to the next is done through gifts, not inheritance. Parents redistribute part of their wealth to their children while they themselves are still alive and their children are still young, as a means of easing their entrance into an autonomous life. See also Del Boca, Daniela, ‘I trasferimenti di reddito nelle famiglie’, in Barbagli, and Saraceno, (eds), Lo stato delle famiglie in Italia, pp. 224–231.Google Scholar

9. Castiglioni, Maria and Zuanna, Gianpiero Della, ‘L'inizio delle relazioni sessuali’, in Barbagli, and Saraceno, (eds), Lo stato delle famiglie in Italia , pp. 76–85.Google Scholar

10. See Scabini, Eugenia and Donati, Pier Paolo, La famiglia lunga del giovane adulto , Vita e Pensiero, Milan, 1988; ISTAT, Indagine multiscopo su famiglie, soggetti sociali, condizioni dell'infanzia, ISTAT, Rome, 1998; Saraceno, Chiara, ‘Being Young in Italy: The Paradoxes of a Familistic Society’, in The European Journal of Social Quality, 2, 2, 2000, pp. 120–132. For an historical overview of the forms of leaving the parental home see Barbagli, Marzio, Castiglioni, Maria and Zuanna, Gianpiero Dalla, Fare famiglia in Italia, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2003, chapter 1.Google Scholar

11. On the characteristics of internal migration in Italy in the late 1990s, see ISTAT, Rapporto annuale. La situazione del paese nel 2002 , ISTAT, Rome 2003, pp. 299–303.Google Scholar

12. According to a study based on longitudinal data, the increase in both women's labour force participation since the 1970s and in the pattern of continuity in participation, notwithstanding changes in family status such as marriage and child-bearing, owes more to the increase in women's education over the succeeding cohorts than to a decrease in gender discrimination. In other words, all or most change derives from the fact that more women in the younger cohorts have better qualifications and enter the kind of jobs in which, even in the past, women were more likely to continue working after they married and had children. See Bison, Ivano, Pisati, Maurizio and Schizzerotto, Antonio, ‘Disuguaglianze di genere e storie lavorative’, in Stella, Simonetta Piccone and Saraceno, Chiara (eds), Genere. La costruzione sociale del femminile e del maschile , Il Mulino, Bologna, 1996, pp. 253–289.Google Scholar

13. See ISTAT, Rapporto annuale. La situazione del paese nel 2001 , ISTAT, Rome, 2002.Google Scholar

14. I have developed this in my ‘Being Young in Italy’.Google Scholar

15. Recent research continues to document the persistent rigidity of the gender division of labour in the family, with women continuing to have by far the greatest share, irrespective of their professional status. Women in paid employment and with family responsibilities work on average (in paid and unpaid work) between one-and-a-half and three working months more than men every year. See d'Italia, Banca, I bilanci delle famiglie italiane nell'anno 2000 , Supplemento al Bollettino Statistico, 12, 6, January 2002; ISTAT, Indagine multiscopo. Google Scholar

16. In order to obtain a divorce, with the exception of those serving long prison sentences for particularly serious crimes, a couple must be legally separated for three years (until 1987 this was five years). Over 40 per cent of all separations do not end in a divorce. See ISTAT, L'instabilità coniugale in Italia: evoluzione e aspetti strutturali. Anni 1980–1999 , ISTAT, Rome, 2001.Google Scholar

17. ISTAT, L'instabilità coniugale in Italia. Google Scholar

18. See Sabbadini, Linda Laura, ‘Le convivenze “more-uxorio”’, in Barbagli, and Saraceno, (eds), Lo stato delle famiglie in Italia , pp. 86–94; Zanatta, Anna Laura, Le nuove famiglie , Il Mulino, Bologna, 1997.Google Scholar

19. See ISTAT, Indagine multiscopo. Google Scholar

20. While in the Centre-North only 10 per cent of separations are judicial and contentious (the remainder being consensual), in the South between one-third and one-quarter of all separations are of the judicial type. See Maggioni, Guido, ‘Le separazioni e i divorzi’, in Barbagli, and Saraceno, (eds), Lo stato delle famiglie in Italia , pp. 232–247.Google Scholar

21. Santini, Antonio, ‘La fecondità’, in Barbagli, and Saraceno, (eds), Lo stato delle famiglie in Italia , pp. 113–121.Google Scholar

22. See Zanatta, , Le nuove famiglie. Google Scholar

23. See Saraceno, Chiara, ‘Commuting between Households: Multiple Memberships, Shifting Boundaries’, in Innovation. The European Journal of Social Sciences , 7, 1, 1994, pp. 51–62, and ISTAT, Indagine multiscopo. CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. See Sabbadini, Linda Laura, ‘La rete di aiuti informali’, in Osservatorio nazionale sulle famiglie e le politiche locali di sostegno alle responsabilità familiari, Famiglie: mutamenti e politiche sociali , II, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2002, pp. 329–356.Google Scholar

25. Given the age differential at marriage and women's longer life expectancy, women are more likely than men to spend their old age living alone. There are 161 men living alone for every 100 women living alone among persons under thirty-four, but twenty-five every 100 among persons over sixty-five.Google Scholar

26. See Buratta, Vittoria and Crialesi, Roberta, ‘Famiglie con problemi di assistenza e sistema di sostegno’, in Osservatorio nazionale, Famiglie: mutamenti e politiche sociali , II, pp. 285–306.Google Scholar

27. On family policy in Italy see Saraceno, Chiara, Mutamenti della famiglia e politiche sociali in Italia , Il Mulino, Bologna, 2003.Google Scholar