Debating Divorce in Italy: Marriage and the Making of Modern Italians, 1860-1974

Italy's divorce law of 1970 was widely interpreted as a turning point in Italian history, but even in Italy the long story behind that law, which began in the 1860s, remains largely unfamiliar. This book uses the divorce question as a lens to examine the contested relationships between the institution of the family, the Italian state, and the Church from the unification of Italy until the mid 1970s. Even though the battle for divorce was won with a resounding victory in Italy's first ever referendum in 1974, the issues that surrounded the divorce debates--the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Italian state--remain central problems in Italian politics today.