© 1999 - 2008
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

The banquet of Aeolus
A familistic interpretation of Italy's lowest low fertility

 

Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna

 
VOLUME 4 - ARTICLE 5
 
Date Received: 15 Nov 2000
Date Published: 8 May 2001

http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol4/5/

Bookmark this page
Send this article to a friend
   
PDF file Click the icon to view and/or download the PDF file.
Once you are in the PDF file, use your browser back button to return to this page.

Abstract
During the last fifteen years in the Western countries, the higher is the proportion of people aged 20-30 living in the parental home, the lower is fertility. In this paper I suggest that the familistic structure of family and society can help in understanding both these demographic behaviours, looking at the Italian case. Nevertheless, these patterns could hold in the strong-family area as a whole, i.e. the Mediterranean Europe. The familism refers to some social norms managing the relationships among members and generations within the nuclear family and kinship. Direct and indirect connections between familistic norms and marital and reproductive behaviour are described, using data from several sources for Italy during the new demographic transition. Finally, I argue that the triumph of the familistic society could be a pyrrhic victory, because the native Italian population risks being unable to reproduce itself.

Author's affiliation
Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna
University of Padua, Italy

Keywords
familism, fertility decline, Italy, late leaving the parental home, strong family system

Word count (Main text)
5700

Other Articles by the same author/authors (in Demographic Research)
file[17-15] Social mobility and fertility
file[14-19] Interdependence between sexual debut and church attendance in Italy

Most recent Similar Articles (in Demographic Research)
file [19-48] The influence of parents on cohabitation in Italy - Insights from two regional contexts (Italy)
file [19-22] Poland: Fertility decline as a response to profound societal and labour market changes? (fertility decline)
file [19-20] Lithuania: Fertility decline and its determinants (fertility decline)
file [19-19] Italy: Delayed adaptation of social institutions to changes in family behaviour (Italy)
file [18-4] How fertility and union stability interact in shaping new family patterns in Italy and Spain (Italy)

[ Back to previous page ]