The approaches we have described provide an extensive foundation for the consideration of non-marital unions in Italy. Table 2.2 presents the corresponding summary.
Table 2.2: Summary of approaches
Formal Institutions
Welfare state approach Through the familialistic structure of the welfare state and the low degree of welfare development, the family is obliged to support its members.
The precarious dualism of the welfare state protects young adults only inadequately against social risks and disregards their interests.
Labor market approach Insecure, low-paid, and precarious employment affects mainly the youth, leading to high rates of youth unemployment and high levels of economic insecurity.
Housing market Given the prevalence of housing property and extraordinary high renting costs, young adults face significant barriers in finding adequate and affordable housing.
Informal Institutions
Gender approach The familialistic structure of the Italian welfare regime has an unequal effect on gender relations: Whereas men are considered as breadwinners, women are assumed to be responsible for child rearing, housework, and care for needy individuals. Consequently, women are not supported by the state in fulfilling these responsibilities; that is, the state offers only limited opportunities for reconciling work and family life. Thus, especially mothers are constrained to leave the labor market and to depend de facto on their husbands.
Role of family ties and religion Given the strong interdependencies within the Italian family, young adults feel compelled to accommodate their parents’ wishes when taking important decisions, such as entering into cohabitation. Due to economic dependencies young adults can only decide to cohabit if parents agree with that choice.
However, given the strong importance of Catholic values and moral concepts, public opinion toward cohabitation is rather negative.
From these theoretical considerations, we see that the failure of both the market and the state assign major responsibilities to the family. As economic means tend to be pooled among the family – and especially concentrated in the parents – the family gains power and has effective means to bring pressure to bear upon young adults. Figure 2.3 illustrates the interplay of all these factors on young adults’ choices for cohabitation.
Figure 2.3: Interplay of formal and informal institutions and their impact on cohabitation in Italy (based on theoretical considerations)
With regard to our categorization, both the state and the market might be perceived as formal institutions, whereas the family might be seen as an informal institution. Given the
Cohabitation
Labor market Housing market
Principle of subsidiarity Clientelism toward the
older generation Strong family ties
FAMILY
MARKET
STATE
Long-term insecurity Transmission of responsibility and
resources Resources & Power
fact that the formal institutions (market and state) fail to provide the economic structure for independent living of young adults, the importance of informal institutions increases considerably.
The question that inevitably emerges is: Which are the people who decide for cohabitation despite all the problems and obstacles involved, and why do they do so? According to the approaches discussed here, we assume that especially adults coming from families with a stronger economic background and with more tolerant values (e.g. better educated parents) are prone to enter a non-marital union. These adults might tend to be higher educated as well. They probably have more broadminded attitudes toward modern living arrangements and toward gender roles in general.
However, some people might also face significant difficulties realizing a non-marital union: couples who suffer more economic problems and couples who have to defend their decision for cohabitation in a more persistent way. Apart from the fact that less educated women are starting to enter non-marital unions, there seems to be some evidence that the meaning of cohabitation is also starting to change. Especially in the urban centers of northern Italy, higher educated women decide for cohabitation as an alternative to any other living arrangement (Rossi 2003). With the slow but steady diffusion of cohabitation, not only higher educated and more economic independent adults decide for such a union, but even people from other social groups. Since cohabitation tends to expand – at least partly – the society may accept informal unions more often than in past times. The more this process develops, the more parents might consider supporting their cohabiting children. An increase of autonomy and individuality would be the result. As to the diffusion of life-course choices in southern Europe, Kohler et al. (2002) stressed an interesting point. With reference to the postponement of first child birth, they argued, “the behavioral change of the innovators has an indirect effect on the incentives and normative context of fertility decisions in the population in general, and this indirect effect makes it more likely that others will adopt the new behavior as well” (Kohler et al. 2002: 658). Moreover, the authors of this study stress that once the transition has started, the population will experience a rapid and persistent delay in the timing of childbearing. This might actually be the case for cohabitation as well: Once a certain threshold is reached, a high number of young adults may follow the path toward cohabitation. Figures of unmarried couples would rise in a more rapid way than in other countries.
However, as a consequence of prevailing traditional attitudes, young Italian couples who enter cohabitation are likely to modify their living arrangement in a way that fits better with prevalent patterns of family formation in Italy. In order to accommodate their parents’ wishes, couples may, for instance, enter cohabitation simultaneously with an engagement. That might be true especially for southern regions of Italy and the Islands. This way, cohabitation tends to be in itself a promise toward marriage, rather than a trial. This could explain why a large proportion of non-marital unions convert into marriages. Further, when analyzing these relationships it will be interesting to examine, whether gender role attitudes among these couples are as liberal as among couples, who perceive their informal union as a real trial. We suppose that gender roles among those couples who already know that they will marry within some months, are less equal than those of couples who still prove their relationship. All these peculiarities might contribute to the development of a specific Mediterranean type of cohabitation in Italy.