Crime, Crisis And Corruption

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 2

Ginsborg, P.1990. A History of Contemporary Italy, p.248. 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.