Family, families, Italian identity
The essay critically examines the origins and the
explanatory value of the commonplace according to
which some Italian «evils» would be tied to the excessive
weight of family solidarity which, in its degenerate form,
originated a long-lasting structure, i.e. «familism». Such
an idea is reinforced by the dualist representations of
Europe which – since the studies of the Cambridge group
in the 1960’s and subsequent variations – contrasted a
Mediterranean area characterized by an extended family
and a young age of marriage, less modernized, with a
North-Western reality characterized by a precocious
affirmation of the nuclear family and a later age of
marriage, the driving force of economic development and
competitive individualism. The author complicates and
falsifies such a picture, pointing out on the one hand the
absence of a unique Italian family model and the diffusion
of the nuclear family in Southern Italy only; on the other
hand – on the basis of women’s studies – the importance.
in the history of Italian society, of further elements,
relatively independent from family morphology: e.g.
family and patronage ties, the weight of primogeniture,
the role of the dowry, the sharecropping character of
agriculture. If we want to find out the significant elements
of the Italian «peculiarity», these are more likely to be
found in the long-lasting political and cultural role of the
Church in the countryside, and the low level of literacy
and information.
Parole chiave: Famiglia; Familismo; Identità italiana
Keywords: Family; Familism; Italian Identity;
Modernization