Italian Family 1: Milan
Why is the Italian birth rate plummeting? Laurie Taylor presents the first of three programmes on the crisis of the Italian family.
Italy, home to the Pope and the Holy See, perhaps the most Catholic of all countries, is undergoing a peculiarly un-Catholic crisis; it now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. There are so few children being born that if the current trend persists, traditional Italians are at risk of dying out in just a handful of generations. How can the nation famed for Romanticism, for enormous affectionate families, for Mamma Mia and for an enviable certainty that all you need is good food, good wine and your family around you, be the same nation that no longer gives birth? Laurie travels to Milan to unpick the tangled interactions between the individual, the family, the church and the state and discovers why Italians are delaying parenthood and in many cases rejecting having a family altogether.
The first of three special editions on the crisis of the Italian family.
Producer: Charlie Taylor.
Last on
More episodes
Previous
Broadcasts
- Wed 22 Aug 2012 16:00大象传媒 Radio 4
- Mon 27 Aug 2012 00:15大象传媒 Radio 4
Explore further with The Open University
大象传媒 Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with The Open University
Download this programme
Subscribe to this programme or download individual episodes.
Podcast
-
Thinking Allowed
New research on how society works