Marriage and the family in Italy in the early nineteenth century

Abstract

This chapter will examine some of the changes relating to marriage and the family in Italy in the early nineteenth century. These changes are of great interest for the social historian of nineteenth-century Italy, and thanks to recent research we now have a fair amount of information for a reconstruction of the history of the family and marriage in Italy in this period. The discussion will be divided into three sections. In the first two parts we shall examine the systems of family formation in Italy, the ways in which these varied from region to region and the nature of the principal changes that took place during the period. Starting with a description of patterns of residence after marriage (the choice between neo-local and patrilocal residence), we shall move on to examine household structures (the composition of a group living in the same household), and the different types of household to which an individual might expect to belong during the span of his or her life. The second section will examine the ages at which males and females married, as well as the correlations between age at marriage, residence patterns after marriage, and household structures. In the final section we shall explore changing attitudes towards children, and in particular the reasons for the massive increase in the abandonment of infants that constituted one of the most dramatic changes affecting relations within the family in this period.