Innovative Behavior in Italy: Parents' Influence in the Choice of Type of First Union

Paola Di Giulio, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
Alessandro Rosina, Università Cattolica

Since the early 1970s cohabitation started to spread among younger generations in Western and Northern European countries, but not in Italy and other Mediterranean countries. Our hypothesis is that the diffusion of cohabitations in Italy is influenced by one of the deepest specificity of the Italian family, the so called strong ties between parents and children. Following this approach, in the weak ties area, the generation that is open to a new behavior is the same that can freely adopt it, while in the strong ties area before the new behavior is adopted by young people, it is necessary that their parents accept it. We will analyze the process of leaving parental home to start an informal union in Italy, using data stemming form the 1998 Italian Multipurpose Survey, explicitly modeling the relationship between cultural values of the parents generation and adoption of innovations between the younger generations.