LIBRI DI FAUSTA ONGARO

In Italy, as well as across Europe, the number of women without children is not negligible and the voluntary component of this phenomenon is in the increase. Indeed, the term childfree rather than childless is used to un-derline this conscious choice. The present paper explores whether the choice of a life without children might also be influenced by contextual factors. Models for con-textual analysis have been applied on individual da-ta coming from the 2003 ISTAT survey Family and Social Subjects and on other regional ISTAT data. Results show that, individual characte-ristics being equal, reproductive orientations are affected by the context. In particular, there seems to be a cultural context effect which gives women greater opportunities to get out of traditional roles and invest in directions other than the family. There may also be a social interaction mechanism responsible for handing down some sort of fertility ideals.

The paper examines the trend of Italian fertility across two decades and di-scusses the reasons why the country has reached one of the lowest fertility levels among the industrialized countries. The very low levels of Italian fer-tility are explained by: (a) a change of values which, at least in the North of the country, has overlapped with expectations of social mobility; (b) a tra-ditional social and family organization that makes children particularly co-stly for women. The paper closes with some considerations on the future of Italian fertility.