Towards a utilitarian family approach (2005)

The return emigration of ‘prodigal sons’, the practical impossibility for many young people to leave their families of origin, the difficulty for some to break their marriage ties because of the economic and social costs of divorce or separation, are giving rise to a utilitarian type of familism, i.e. a family-relationship model-based above all on the economic and social benefits of living together. Weakened by the effects of the economic crisis (explosion of job insecurity, inflationary processes, the decline in production) and by the processes of disintegration that began with the introduction of divorce and the inclusion of women in the workplace, the family resists as an economic and relational subject capable of providing its members with shelter from the harshness of the world.