Family patterns of change in Italy: Challenges, conflicts, policies, and practices

Abstract

A growing interest in families and family policy has led to significant new policies in Italy in recent years. Since the fall of 2008, in fact, international financial and economic turmoil has profoundly shaped and impacted the course of reform processes around the world. Considerable differences have emerged in terms of economic performance and the ability of individual states to respond to the crisis with appropriate social measures. Not all welfare regimes, in fact, have adapted to the changing society and labor market. In Italy, the process of welfare reconstructing has developed slowly, moving in the direction of a liberal work-family system that in reality is increasing inequalities (Riva, 2012 ). The deeply rooted cultural and political resistance to change, together with current budget constraints (Kazepov & Genova), conservative gender-specific division of labor within the family, and a familialism ideology (the male breadwinner being the primarily responsible for the well-being of all family members), has made welfare state reforms hard to implement. However, due to the European Union political and normative initiatives, recently interesting changes especially in workfamily policies have taken place in the country. One of the major problems facing Italy today is tension over whether to allocate more resources to job development or to the expansion of social protection, which adds up to the pressures of globalization and the Europeant Monetary Unit, the lack of infractructures, the need for institutional reforms, the issue of federalism, the discrepacy between the north and the south, the major problems of povery, housing, education and social exclusion, the integration of immigrants and a pattern of income distribution that ia smong the most unequal in the OECD countries. There is tension over whether to allocate more resources to job development or to the expansion of social protection. The chapter overviews the latest updates in family policies and practices and critically discusses their implications and their consequences.