CRIME, CORRUPTION AND CRISIS?

ITALY SINCE 1945

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

TOPIC: Describe the nature of the changes that have taken place in
the structure of the family in post war Italy.
 In post war Italy, family was the most important institution. The importance of the
family lies in the economic unit. The families in post war Italy were self-funding and
the size of them was larger because a lot of hands were needed on the land. At least 40
per cent of the population was working in the land. These families were called
extended and they included parents (usually two or three couples in the same house),
at least three children, grandparents, cousins, etc. All these people used to work
altogether for the sake of the family and because they didn’t want to pay outsiders.
There was also a great feeling of security in the extended families. It was supposed
that very member protected each other. So, the relationship between the members was
more reliable because it was a relationship of give and take. There was a mutual
support between them and their neighbours. There was a great social community with
exchanges of goods and favours.

The heads of the house were called capoccia and his wife massaia. Capoccia
was he male person who was occupied with all the economic activities, the outside
world and the controller of the relationships in the house. Massaia was the oldest
female of the house who was responsible and took all the decisions about the
housework.

However, the Great War had a lot of disadvantages for the countryside. All the
men had to go and fight whereas the women, the children and the old men stayed back
to take care of the fields and the family production. The situation in the countryside
didn’t change a lot because women were used to work in the fields but in the cities
things were totally different. Women couldn’t work; they had to stay at homes and
take care of their children. Unfortunately their children starved and they suffered a lot.
Some of the women had separated from their children and had been forced into
prostitution.

Little by little, rural families started to move to the towns searching for a better
house and a better job. In this way, the institution of the extended families had begun
to fray and started to consider as old fashioned. At that time, the role of the family
was extolled by the press and the magazines but they continued to say that woman’s
place was at home.
 As a lot of new people arrived in the cities, the need for job opportunities was
growing up. Most of the people were uneducated and so they wanted something
simple to do, like sales assistant. To fulfil this need a great number of big department
stores were created. The department stores started a new trend. They made shopping
very fashionable and trendy and many women started using this hobby to make their
homes look friendlier and warmer. A lot of new accessories made homes better for a
living. One of them was the electric light. Those factors played a central role in the
gradual changing of the family institution.

Another important matter for the family was marriage. Marriage was very
popular in post war Italy. The limit age for women to be married was 24.3 while for
men was 27. Before marriage both women and men lived with their parents. Sadly,
with the change on the nature of the family a lot of people decided to live on their
own. This new trend wasn’t good because fewer families were created and no children
were born.

The problem of less born children also had to do with contraception. Many
Italians used them in order not to get married for the sake of an unwanted pregnancy.
Unfortunately, selling or distributing condoms was illegal until 1971 and a lot of
Italians just tried to be careful. Some times this didn’t work and an unwanted
pregnancy appeared. So, the next step for getting rid of the unwanted pregnancy was
abortion, which was also illegal until 1978. However a lot of doctors practised it
secretly. As soon as abortions started taking place, the percentages of the newborn
children were fewer every year. Another problem was that the new couples were
leaving a gap of three or five years after their marriage for giving birth to their first
child. In about 1970 abortion became legal for women over 18 years old but a lot of
doctors didn’t want to perform it.

The government tried to solve the problem of less born children by giving
several allowances for the married couples. For each child the couple was giving birth
they had a tax relief. This tax relief was bigger for the more children someone could
have and finally if you had more than ten children you didn’t have to pay tax at all.
Unfortunately this didn’t seem to work with Italians because they continued to have
few children.
 In the same period, about 1970, the ‘women’s movement’, comes to change a
lot of things. Women started protesting for equal rights with men and more
opportunities in the workplace. Before this happens the Italian society wanted women
at homes raising their children and be good wives. In a chauvinist society like this it
was also preferred for women not to have a job. But the worst of all was that women
had to take their husband’s permission to buy a house or open a bank account. At that
point women started protest about their equal rights with men and especially the right
to divorce their husband’s. This was the final crisis for the family institution. Many
proposals for the divorce law were given in the courts and luckily few of them were
against it. The Catholic Church was totally against the divorce law because they
believed that the marriage is a divine union between the man and the woman and
nobody except God could divorce them. Finally, by the December of 1970 Italy had
the first divorce law. Women’s protest had paid back.

The Italian families were changing in size and nature. The extended families
didn’t exist anymore and little by little Italy became from a ‘hardworking society’ a
‘leisure society’. People had to work regularly but fewer hours. People had new needs
and they tried to fulfil them. They wanted to be modernised, to have new consumer
goods and of course new houses. As for the consumer goods the most common to
have were televisions and cars.

Television started using by the bars and the cafés in order to gather more
customers. It was a new way of entertainment and people in the first place went in the
bars to watch it with friends because it was expensive. Then the families started
buying their own televisions, they stayed at home and became less socialized.
Moreover with this new trend the cinemas lost many of their fans but remained a
social activity for Sunday evenings.

As for the cars, they became very fashionable in the 1940s. People connected
cars with holidays and travelling. Families travelled by car on the mountains and the
sea. Eventually the need for a second house appropriate for holidays became a new
trend. Everyone also must have a washing machine, a telephone and a fridge for the
perfect house. All these and also “cars and television further encouraged an essentially
privatised and familiar use of leisure time.”1

“Certainly, the innovations of the 1970s and 1980s – civil marriage, divorce,
legal abortion, reliable contraception, equality within marriage, fewer children – were
all huge social changes. But family life remained important.”2 Its nature changed but
now it had more unity because the family size was smaller with fewer members and it
was easily to control. Moreover as people modernised they created families without
being married, they just lived together, had their children but there wasn’t a big
difference with the old families. People who preferred this way of life were educated
men and especially women who were also economically independent. We can’t
criticize if this new trend was better or worse, the only thing we can say is that it was
a different change from the traditional families and met the needs of the modern
Italian life.

1
Ginsborg, P.1990. A History of Contemporary Italy, p.248.
2
Clark, M.1996. Modern Italy 1871-1995, p.401.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 Clark, M. Modern Italy 1871-1995. 1996 (second edition). Essex: Longman

Group Limited.
 Ginsborg, P. A History of Contemporary Italy, Society and Politics 1943-1988.
1990. England: Penguin Group.