The typical Italian family, although still very close to its extended family, is beginning do distance itself from other family members. Many of the traditions remain, however they are slowly starting to become more relaxed. Families often live in very close proximity to each other, often in the same house. Italian men tend to live at home until they are married

Another dramatic change in Italian culture is the rapidly declining birthrate. Overall, Italian families are having less and less children, and are therefore the population is becoming older rather than remaining balanced. There are more people over the age of 60 than there are under the age of 20. One of the main reasons for this dramatic decrease in the birthrate is that families can no longer afford to have many children. With the mother working, she does not have as much time to care for the children and also has children later. Because of this, she has less time to have children and the family will only have one or two. Although women are supported by the government during their maternity leave, many employers do not support this and will threaten the women. They will not hire a woman if she is planning to have a child and will go as far as to fire a woman while she is on maternity leave and say that it was for another reason. Even if she were to be granted maternity leave from her job, the standards in hospitals and infant schools were not adequate . For this reason, women are hesitant to have children, because they know it will hurt their careers. Another reason for the declining birthrate is the introduction of contraception and the legality of abortion. Italian women terminate one pregnancy for every three live births, which totals around 160,000 abortions for 500,000 live births a year . Birth control has also played a large role in the decline of births. While the birthrate is declining, the divorce rate is increasing; the 1974 the divorce referendum, which passed by 59.1%, and the 1975 family reform laws made this all possible. Unhappy couples no longer had to find a guilty party to separate; they could do so on there own basis. However, Italians still h

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, Overall Italian, European Union, War II, italian family, families live, extended family, maternity leave, divorce rate, loud crazy family, children families live, crazy family, home married, italian families, changed italian, loud crazy, typical italian family,