Family politics: political rhetoric and the transformation of family life in the Italian Second Republic

In recent years the family has taken central stage within the Italian political debate, as a privileged instrument of political confrontation and propaganda. In itself, this is not a new phenomenon. The legal definition of what constitutes a family has represented a major terrain of political confrontation throughout the post-war years, and any reform carried out or attempted in this area has provoked highly divisive reactions. Moving from the debates that have surrounded the 2004 law on medically assisted procreation (Legge 40/2004) and the plan for the regulation of unmarried stable cohabitations presented by the Prodi government in January 2007, this article analyses the use of the family and reproduction in contemporary Italian political discourse. The argument suggested is that after the critical engagement over the family promoted by the social movements of the late 1960s – whose effects in terms of policy making could be observed throughout the 1970s and early 1980s – an ideological approach has prevailed in Italy throughout the 1990s. Increasingly within the ‘second republic’ the reference to the family has become a privileged instrument of political confrontation, with little attention given to the actual transformations (and continuities) that characterize contemporary family life.