La socializzazione al genere nelle famiglie italiane: figurazioni e pratiche

Abstract

Elias extensively studied the socialization process through figurations. However, he never explored specifically gender socialization and gender relations. Integrating the eliasian perspective with the one of Connell about configurations of gender practices, the paper investigates what are the characteristics of the gender socialization process in Italian families and the relationship between family figurations and the configurations of gender practices. We used both quantitative data, collected through the European Values Study survey, and 197 qualitative interviews with the members (parents and children of different genders) of 48 Italian families. The quantitative data depict a country still traditional in terms of gender attitudes, even if with significant differences between generations, while the qualitative ones show a more nuanced picture. Indeed, parents and children share an egalitarian vision of gender roles, but gender practices both inside and outside home continue to be differentiated for men and women, especially between mothers and fathers. Every eliasian figuration inside families, then, is based on asymmetrical configurations of practices of gender. In this way, the socialization process to gender, thanks to the civilization process between parents and children, tends to reproduce familiar figurations that are intimately gendered and asymmetrical and that are not problematized nor by sons nor by daughters.