Italy, Families in

The Italian family is conspicuous for its long-standing wide variety of family structures. The process of nuclearization was slow and only accomplished after World War II. In the European setting, as of the mid-2010s Italy is one of the countries with the lowest marriage and fertility rates and with the highest percentage of young people aged 18–34 who still live at home. With regard to the emergence of new family forms, premarital cohabitation has only become widespread since the end of the 1990s, particularly among the young generations of the center-north, and since the year 2000 extramarital births have risen in number. The fertility rate decline and increase in life expectancy have raised the issue of how families will cope with the demands of an aging family network and its increasing caregiving needs, where welfare policies aimed at the elderly and families are scarce.