Do Rational Choices Guide Family Formation and Dissolution in Italy?

As social pressure to adhere to accepted standards recedes, individuals are freer to choose their preferred family arrangement. But their choices do not always follow a strictly rational approach: rather, they appear to be guided by a trial-and error logic, which implies contradictions, loss of efficiency and, occasionally, low personal satisfaction. Modern welfare states, while supporting freedom of choices (which includes the possibility of change: e.g. divorce, or medically assisted fertility in one’s late years), must combine this with other targets, ranging from the empowerment of women to the protection of the weak (children, especially), to a system of incentives that eventually ensures socially acceptable outcomes, including a sufficient level of fertility. The now undisputed primacy of the individual will not destroy families, but it will deeply transform them, and increase their heterogeneity: relationships will increase in number but decrease in duration and intensity.