Italian family stories: the new ” step-family “. The Italian family between cohabitation, re-cohabitation and new marriages (1995)

Stepfamilies consist of men and women with previous marital experience and including first and/or second marriage children. In Europe, this kind of family model is very widespread. In Italy, however, it is only now that it has become a real phenomenon, which society has to deal with. The family has become an actual container, within which it is possible to find everything.

The changes that have affected the various dimensions of people’s lives – the increase in the level of education, the need to enter the increasingly dynamic labour market, consumer choices, higher expectations – have led to the need to create a new family and at the same time to break up and rebuild it. These latter factors, although combined in heterogeneous ways, have produced visible effects on the family microcosm. All this has happened so quickly, and in a country that is not only not very receptive to change but also anchored to the traditional concept of the family as a model of social organisation.