Family and Social Network Factors After Divorce in Catholic Italian Women and Catholic Anglophone Women

Abstract

Twenty-one Catholic Italian divorced women and a matched group of 21 Catholic Anglophone divorced women (who were born in Canada and whose ethnic roots were in Great Britain) were studied with regard to several family and social network variables. It was found that Catholic Italian women reported having grown up in an extended family situation more frequently, rated their degree of family loyalty as greater, felt that their fathers were more disapproving of their divorces, and reported fewer nonfamily members who could be relied on to provide emotional support than Catholic Anglophone women. However, the two groups did not differ significantly in terms of family concept, interaction with their parents after divorce, network density, mothers' approval/disapproval of the divorce, and sex role orientation. The findings were discussed in terms of the limits of the methods used in this study and suggestions for further research.