Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-war Europe: Britain and Italy Compared

What makes a family? As traditional definitions of what constitute a family seem to be increasingly challenged in public debates, Stefania Bernini explores which factors were most influential in shaping dominant notions of family life in the post-war period. Taking Britain and Italy as comparative cases, she shows how in both countries the family was used in the post-war period as a privileged means of pursuing political interests, partly as a consequence of the new political landscape created by the emergence of the welfare state. However, approaches to the regulation of family life ultimately diverged in Italy and Britain, as a result of long-established cultural differences and contingent political factors. The book identifies the main areas in which this divergence was apparent, and discusses the long-term consequences of the different routes followed by the two countries after the Second World War.

About the Author:
Stefania Bernini has held post-doctoral positions at the Open University, St Antony's College, Oxford, and the European University Institute in Florence. She is currently a Marie-Curie Fellow at the Institute of Social Policy, University of Warsaw