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# 70 •OCTOBER 19 , 2015
And thus, let me provide a short and
quick reply: yes, the last point is very
true, but before going into the details
let me provide some background
to the general concept of the Italian
family and the specific role of each
member in it.
The Italian family, as a predominant
group in the bigger Italian community, has radically changed in the past
30 years: we have passed from the
school of thought of our grandparents, according to which the family nucleus was holy and unbreakable, to a
typology of family in which 37.9 % of
the current couple marries only after
a long period of living together in order to “test” the union before making
it “official” through marriage.
Thus, today we see staggering numbers of separations and divorces
compared to our ancestors’ time and
the not too distant 80s or 90s. Just in
2012, for 1000 married couples, there were 182 divorces and 311 legal
separations. This instability due to so
many variables (too many to discuss
here – age, religion, culture, job, ease
of Worldwide communication and
travel and so forth), has inevitably
affected the number of children per
family: we have passed from 3-4 chil-
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