Volume 19 - Article 19 | Pages 665–704  

Italy: Delayed adaptation of social institutions to changes in family behaviour

By Alessandra De Rose, Filomena Racioppi, Anna Laura Zanatta

This article is part of the Special Collection 7 "Childbearing Trends and Policies in Europe"

Abstract

Considering its very low fertility and high age at childbearing, Italy stands alone in the European context and can hardly be compared with other countries, even those in the Southern region. The fertility decline occurred without any radical change in family formation. Individuals still choose (religious) marriage for leaving their parental home and rates of marital dissolution and subsequent step-family formation are low. Marriage is being postponed and fewer people marry. The behaviours of young people are particularly alarming. There is a delay in all life cycle stages: end of education, entry into the labour market, exit from the parental family, entry into union, and managing an independent household. Changes in family formation and childbearing are constrained and slowed down by a substantial delay (or even failure) with which the institutional and cultural framework has adapted to changes in economic and social conditions, in particular to the growth of the service sector, the increase in female employment and the female level of education. In a Catholic country that has been led for almost half a century by a political party with a Catholic ideology, the paucity of attention to childhood and youth seems incomprehensible. Social policies focus on marriage-based families already formed and on the phases of life related to pregnancy, delivery, and the first months of a newborn’s life, while forming a family and childbearing choices are considered private affairs and neglected.

Author's Affiliation

• Alessandra De Rose - Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Italy EMAIL
• Filomena Racioppi - Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Italy EMAIL
• Anna Laura Zanatta - Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Italy EMAIL

Other articles by the same author/authors in Demographic Research

Stability and change in family time transfers and workload inequality in Italian couples
Volume 40 - Article 3

Cause-specific mortality as a sentinel indicator of current socioeconomic conditions in Italy
Volume 39 - Article 21

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