Portrait of the Italian Family: Past, Present and Future

The shape of the Italian family has radically transformed since the second half of the last century: both vertical and horizontal ties have loosened due to major changes in marriage and fertility. The signs of modernity (increases in cohabitation, birth outside marriaghe, separation, and divorce) have clashed with the persistence of the traditional model of the "strong" family (through the long stay in the family of origin, for example), causing a short circuit in the population vitality. The most dynamic group consists of foreign families, a relatively new phenomenon for the Italian society, which has grown along with the development of the integration process. This study aims to deeply investigate these dynamics and to depict possible future scenarios (both in numeric and structural terms) on the basis of the projected data