Presentation  Presentation  

Summary

Link: Networks e Synergies

Social Development Networks

Chapter 1

Housing quality

Chapter 2

The centre and the suburbs: different systems of mobility

Chapter 3

The family and solidarity

Chapter 4

Quality of education network

Chapter 5

Living the employment network

Economic Networks

Chapter 6

Links within the economic system

Chapter 7

The trade network

Chapter 8

Veneto agriculture network

Chapter 9

Mountain synergies

Chapter 10

Production networks

Chapter 11

The distribution network

Chapter 12

Tourism: synergy between sectors and networks between individuals

Institutional services and
networks

Chapter 13

The network for workplace health prevention

Chapter 14

The Veneto model for the integration of social and healthcare services

Chapter 15

Public Administration: services for citizens and businesses

Chapter 16

Telematic networks in Veneto

Chapter 17

The environmental and territorial checking networks

Chapter 18

Cross-border institutional networks

Chapter 19

Inter-institutional local models




3.1 - New equilibriums in family relationships

The significant demographic and social transformations that developed countries have undergone during the last ten years have contributed to changing the structure of the family and the shape of family relationships enormously.
The idea of the family is moving ever further away from the traditional model and is ending up as fragmented and lacking proper structure. Nowadays, the average family in Veneto has 2.4 members, 30 years ago, in 1978, the average was 3.3 members. The continuing low fertility rates, the tendency amongst young people to put off creating a family of their own, the ageing population and the lack of stability within marriages have all led to an increase in the number of people living alone and of childless couples.
The fact that families are getting smaller is also a result of the breaking up of extended families which once upon a time were very common in Italy, especially in Veneto where the regional layout based on farms and settlements formed the setting for bigger families than in other regions, even those in southern Italy. Many generations of families living together was also a strategy for making the most of material and financial resources. Nowadays, despite the fact that increasing life expectancy has given rise to an increase in the number of generations alive at the same time, having a few generations living together in the same family home is quite rare. When young people get married they choose not to live at home with their parents but prefer to live a short, or very short, distance away; this is quite characteristic of Italian family culture and could be regarded as an extension of the traditional extended family. In 2008 in Veneto, 7% of total families were complex families (containing more than one nucleus), and just 1.3% were two-generation families (Figure 3.1.1).
The nuclear family continues to dominate even more; this family has just one nucleus, usually formed by a couple with or without children, sometimes there is also another family member, often a widowed parent.
New forms of families are also becoming more common such as restructured families, single-parent families or non-married couples. The latter is no longer seen as a preliminary stage before marriage but as a steady alternative to getting married and can also produce children. These new types of families require special attention also because the search for new equilibriums can lead to difficulties in relationships.
These changes are taking place over most of Europe, even more in other countries than in Italy; as a matter of fact the Italian family model still maintains its own peculiarities compared to the rest of Europe. Some features of this include the longer and more solid family histories, the leaving-it-later-to-become-parents, the extremely low fertility levels, the lower numbers of non-married couples living together and of children being born out of wedlock.
Besides all this, the fact that more and more women are working is also having a significant impact on family life as it requires time, workloads, and responsibilities to be reorganised and shared and therefore changes the nature of intra- and inter-generational relationships.
The nature of relationships within the family is closely linked to the life cycle in which the family finds itself, to the ages and roles played by the family members. In what follows we shall concentrate our attention on certain stages of life: taking responsibility for oneself and leaving home to create a family of one's own or to become independent; moving from being parents to being grandparents; and the delicate phase of being an infant and creating a relationship with mum and dad.

Top  Choosing to become an adult

The years from age 18 to 34 are an important period of life containing many big changes and plans for the future, and young Europeans have different times and ways of facing this period. The biggest difference is in the age at which young people decide to leave home and to start an autonomous and independent life. In north-western European countries, for example, leaving the family nest tends to happen earlier than in the eastern and southern countries, usually before the age of 25 and actually just after reaching adulthood in the Scandinavian countries. In Italy on the other hand, the tendency is to live at home until over 30 years of age. This is becoming ever more common and is also becoming more the norm in the southern regions too where up until a few years ago young people were more likely to get married and have families of their own at an earlier age.
Out of Italian 18-34-year-olds in 2008, a good 66% of males and 53% of females still lived at home and were supported by their families. Figures were lower in Veneto, with 61% of males and 48.3% of females, yet these are still very high shares, much higher than the European average and also than figures for other Mediterranean countries. At the other end of the scale, in Sweden these percentages stood at just 12% of males and 10% of females of the same age group.
Countries in Eastern Europe follow their own model as young people tend to leave home later than the EU15 average, but they are also more likely to have children at an earlier age (44% of females and 28% of males already have children by the age of 34 compared to 31% of females and 16% of males in the EU15 countries). Even if they are married with children of their own, they are also more likely to stay at home with their parents, living as an extended, two-generation family (Figure 3.1.2).
This is based on cultural reasons, but not only. In Italy in particular, but also in Mediterranean countries in general, the ties between parents and children are certainly of a different nature. These ties tend to be stronger and are intense for much longer: parents tend to invest a lot in their children, both emotionally and financially; they are extremely protective and seem willing to make more sacrifices for their well-being and to have them live at home for much longer, until such a time as the greatest possible opportunities arrive for their future.
All of this comes hand in hand with the particularities of the situation with regards welfare. In Italy welfare is not terribly generous towards young people and families in general; it is actually one of the countries where, financially, having children is most penalised. The lack of adequate public aid and of sufficient social security does not make it easy for Italian youth to leave home and to support themselves without their parents' help, especially considering the greater length of educational careers, the costs of housing and rents, as well as the problems with the job market which is less flexible and offers lower wages than for the same age group in England, Germany or France.
A clear sign of this is that in Italy, between 2003 and 2007, just 20.8% of 18 to 39 year olds left their parents' home and, despite their best intentions, many young people are not able to fly the nest. Out of 100 people who in 2003 had stated that they were ready to leave home shortly, only 53.4% actually did leave, and out of those who said they probably would leave, only 24.2% really managed to.
Becoming independent in Italy is, therefore, difficult and risky, which is confirmed by the fact that young people here only leave home when they have a stable enough job providing reasonable financial autonomy. They also tend to leave home not alone but to go and live with their partner; only 6.6% of young people in Veneto live alone and not with a partner, and 93.3% of them have a job to rely on.
It is quite different in the north of Europe, especially in the Scandinavian countries where a lot of young people live alone (44% of males and 31% of females in Sweden); and they leave home to study at university, often relying on student grants and aid to help them support themselves (Figure 3.1.3).

Top  From parents to grandparents

The way in which young people start up their families also has consequences on the structure of families with older people in them. If young people tend to put off going to live on their own, or, less frequently, if they carry on living with their parents even once they're married, or they return to the parental home after separating from their spouses, then by the same token, the parents of these young people find themselves living at length in the same house as their grown-up children, even once they reach a certain age. Viceversa then if young people tend to head off on their own at an early age, then their parents will live alone together without their children, or completely alone if they are widowed.
Four out of ten elderly people in Veneto live with their partners, without their children because most of them have already left home. Instead, one-quarter of elderly people live alone. Elderly people living with their partners (with or without the children), and with other family members are those with the most stable and potentially most solid family setups; in Veneto these account for 17.9% of elderly people. The remaining share of families are elderly people no longer living with their partners but with other family members, siblings or more often their children (16.4%) (Figure 3.1.4).
Most elderly people, therefore, either live alone or with their partner, without their children living with them. As they are much smaller family nuclei, they tend also to be the most vulnerable: in an emergency, the elderly person cannot count on the immediate help of a younger family member living with them. Therefore they have to ask for help elsewhere: from their offspring living away from home, from their neighbours, from local volunteers, or from public or private care services. The problem is even more serious for men as they are not as used to facing the difficulties of everyday life alone.
Children tend to leave their elderly parents where they are, while they are in good enough health, without having them move in with them, but rather attempting to live close by in order to be available to provide some help at least. Being nearby enables them to see each other and keep up a relationship; for the elderly person this is essential both to reduce feelings of loneliness and to help make a change from the daily routine.
Only when one of the parents becomes widowed, or is unable to look after themselves, does living together become more of a likelihood; the elderly person is more likely to be taken in by the family than to be put in a home. This happens only in the most serious of cases, when the person requires specialised care or when the family is not around or cannot cope with the strain.
While the elderly still have their health, they often take on the role of carers for their grandchildren; when they can, families ask the grandparents to look after the children as they are often more flexible, in terms of times and duration of care, and above all are free-of-charge and can be trusted. When elderly people's health deteriorates and leaves them unable to care for themselves, however, it is the children who then take care of the parent. If life expectation is, in fact, longer, and so elderly people will live for longer, it is also true that these people will not be self-sufficient in the latter part of their lives, and the period of time between losing autonomy and death is bound to become even longer over time.
One of the main worries in Italy and in many of the industrialised countries is, therefore, how to support the increasing need for care for the elderly, especially those with serious health problems, as the families themselves will be less and less able and available to provide for this.
In the past, elderly people could rely on the help of their many children and on the female family members who didn't work; however many of tomorrow's elderly, with no children or with one at the most, will have to look outside of the family for help. This situation is bound to become even more common where family ties are weakening and relationships between family members are crumbling.
If we take into account the fact that in a family care for an elderly family member often falls upon the wife-mother-daughter-daughter-in-law, who nowadays has to share her time ever more between work and family, then the outlook for the future is increasingly unsustainable, as is highlighted by the trend for the elderly people per woman index.
The future looks even more glum when we consider that fertility rates are decreasing steadily (at the beginning of the 1960s, each woman in Veneto had an average of 2.5 children; forty years later this has dropped to less than 1.5). In addition, women are working more and more, which means that there will be an ever larger number of women who work outside of the home and who have less time to act as carers (Figure 3.1.5).
Emotional and financial support are potentially greater the bigger the family, the nearer they live to each other and the closer their relationships. In Italy around 86% of elderly people have offspring who are still alive, with an average of 2.4 children. In 34% of cases at least one of their children lives with them, and in 36% of the cases they live separately but nearby, less than a kilometre away. Only 4% of elderly people have their closest offspring living more than 50 kilometres away or abroad.
The fact of living close together clearly enables the family members to see each other often; more than half of elderly people see their son or daughter every day, and 88% see them at least once a week.
In 76% of cases, elderly people have siblings who are still alive, and many have three or more (34.2%). These siblings tend to live a maximum of 16 kilometres away (in 72.5% of cases). Almost 42% see their closest brother or sister at least once a week; the remainder rarely or never see their beloved sibling, especially if they live far away or if the elderly person has health problems which make moving around often difficult.

Top  When there are children in the family

The family is the child's natural habitat and can have an enormous effect on his cognitive development and personality, passing on behaviour traits and values to form the adults of tomorrow.
The emotional environment the child grows up in, created by the relationship between the parents and between the parents and the child, can help to satisfy his need for security and to feel fulfilled. Within the family, children learn to love, to accept and overcome initial inevitable difficulties; they learn how to behave and how to relate to others; they prepare to socialise and to meet other people.
The context today's children grow up in is certainly very different to the one their parents and grandparents grew up in. In terms of family size, in Veneto, in line with the Italian situation, the one- or, at the most, two-child family tends to prevail: more than half of children have just one sibling, and one out of three is an only child. Furthermore, as a result of increasingly fragile marriage ties, the percentage of minors living with just one parent has reached 5.7%; this phenomenon is seen much more on a national level, however, as in Italy this share has risen from 6% to 9.4% of minors in ten years.
It is much more common to have both parents working as well, rather than the traditional family model where the mother stayed at home. This is especially true in the north of Italy, and has increased since ten years ago. In Veneto in 1998, for example, almost half of children had both parents who worked; in 2008 this share had risen further to reach 55.6% (Figure 3.1.6).
When both parents work, it becomes especially necessary to organise family time very carefully. When the children, above all when they are very small, aren't with their parents or at school, the family has to get help from other people, be they other family members or not. This situation is ever more common, especially as more mothers now have a job which takes them out of the home. In 2008, only 19.7% of Veneto children did not need to be entrusted to the care of other adults. Obviously, the younger the child the more need there is for some kind of support.
Often families manage to organise themselves without turning to outside help; support is often provided by family members (grandparents, brothers and sisters and other relatives, whether they live with the family or not). For more than 60% of children, help comes in the form of friends or neighbours, while only 5.1% of children have paid-for care.
It is mostly grandparents who take care of the smallest children, whether they live with the family or not: 64.3% of infants in Veneto are left with their grandparents at least a few times a week. Relationships between grandparents and grandchildren are very close: 40% of infants and children see their grandparents every day and more than 30% see them at least once a week.
Changes to family structure have also obviously caused changes to the family's role as educator and point of social contact. Once upon a time, the family was the main source of primary learning for a very small child, whereas now this role is also shared and integrated with input from other sources, such as nurseries and pre-schools. Most children aged 0-5 in Veneto go to a nursery or pre-school; families mainly choose this for their children because they realise how important it is from an educational point of view and also so that their children can spend time with other children. There are also some families (4%) who send their children here because they do not have any family available to look after them instead.
A child's relationship with his parents is the most essential and irreplaceable form of education a child can receive, also in order to mould his way of being and relating to other people. During childhood, this relationship is also strengthened through time spent playing and being together. Despite their frenetic daily lives, parents are also careful to provide for this aspect of their small children's lives. Playtime for parents with their children is common and fairly intensive: more and more children get to play with their parents, both on workdays and on holidays. Around half of children aged between 3 and 10 play with their mother every day, and 34.7% play with their father every day. Holidays give parents, and especially fathers, the chance to spend more time with their children and so being free from work means that on these days 66.5% of children get to play with their mothers and 68.8% with their fathers.
It is not only playing together in the literal sense of the word that makes up fun time in parent-child relationships. Time spent telling children stories or listening to what they have done at school, or on trips to parks, to the zoo or to the cinema is also precious and vital towards the development of a close and happy relationship.
Siblings of course are important playmates for children (in around 64% of cases), as are cousins, especially on holidays (36.1%) and, in a different way, grandparents, who are ever more present for their grandchildren (on weekdays 20.2% of children play with their grandfather and 30.2% with their grandmother). A ridiculously small number of children are left to play on their own thankfully, and this confirms the fact that infants and children are becoming less and less isolated.
The smallest children play mainly in their own home, as they get bigger however they tend to spend more time outside of their home environment. After the home come the yard (30.8%) and public parks (40.8%) as the most common play areas; the local parish church (which often have play areas attached) is also a common place to meet up and play in Veneto (19.3%).

Figure 3.1.1
Families by type. Veneto - Years 1951-2008
Figure 3.1.2
Percentage of 18-34 year olds living at home with their parents by gender, in European countries - Year 2003
Figure 3.1.3
Percentage distribution of 18-34 year olds by family situation. Veneto and Italy - Year 2008
Figure 3.1.4
Percentage distribution of elderly people (aged 65 and over and aged 75 and over) by family situation. Veneto and Italy - Year 2008
Figure 3.1.5
Trend and forecasts on elderly people per woman index. Veneto and Italy - Years 1998-2008 and 2009-2020 forecast
Figure 3.1.6
Percentage of infants and children aged 0-17 by type of family. Veneto and Italy - Years 1998 and 2008


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Data processed by the Statistics Office of Regione Veneto are collective property; reproduction of this material is authorised for non-commercial purposes only, provided the source "Regione Veneto - Regional Statistics System Management" is acknowledged.
English translation by the University of Padova Language Centre.