Families Are Changing: What About the Policies? Between Good Intentions and Good Practices

The pandemic crisis has, on the one hand exacerbated the fragility of many Italian families, but on the other hand it has also reconfirmed the remarkable resilience of family relationships, with families having once again shown that they know how to react to the strong and rapid changes caused by the emergency, with an equally strong and rapid response capacity. As is well known, one of the pillars on which the Italian welfare system is based is family welfare, i.e. the set of caregiving and mutual support practices implemented within family relationships that make it possible to compensate for the shortcomings of public welfare in terms of both cash and in-kind support. Actually, the “familist” model, beyond the “amoral” face painted by Banfield, represents an indispensable resource for Italian welfare: families have been forced to find (and most times they have succeeded) compensatory mediations to the often dissimilar and contradictory requests that the institutions have made to the various categories of citizens. Families have therefore had to, and been able to, transform their hard-won equilibrium, in order to respond to the different measures implemented by the government. On the other hand, policies have generally been articulated in a sectoral way, in watertight compartments, unaware of the network of family relationships on which they were going to impact. However, increasingly and ever more rapidly, cultures, forms, structures, needs of families have changed in recent decades, requiring answers that are not generalized and standardized, but able to adapt flexibly to heterogeneous and constantly-evolving situations. This process has undoubtedly generated reflection and debate both in the institutional world and in that of associations and the third sector. But these reflections have often only been translated into good intentions, sometimes into valid experimentations, which have rarely been able to be transformed into structural responses. In 2021 the Social Policy Section of the AIS took up the challenge of not letting slip once again the opportunity for policymakers and practitioners to confront the reality of families, in order to develop new models of welfare and intervention, but above all to move from intentions to practices. The result was a Conference in which theoretical reflection, empirical research and field experience were intertwined, offering numerous ideas on issues of great relevance today for those who study the link between family changes and policymaking. The special issue collects some of the contributions to the conference. In particular, the first part presents three items of research on families at the time of Covid, focusing on the impact of government measures, the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on families and social services, on post-pandemic family well-being.