Suchergebnisse

This work aims at investigating gendered embodiment in fathering practices in a national context, Italy, where understandings of fatherhood, at the institutional as well as the individual level, are still more centered on the provider ideal than on a model of nurturing and caring fatherhood. This qualitative research on Italian first-time fathers of children under three years of age focused on men's participation in routine, instrumental, and material childcare practices, exploring the potential for a transformation in both the meanings attached to fatherhood as well as to aspects related to embodiment and constructions of masculinity that sustain inequalities. The findings show that, while participation in hands-on childcare plays an important role in the construction of intimate father-child relationships, a legitimation of men's bodies' involvement in interaction with children is still missing, especially for care practices that overlap with constructions of motherhood.

AbstractThe introduction of the Single Universal Child Allowance in 2021 marked a sharp turning point in Italian family policy. Presented as a major revolution aimed at combating the country's alarmingly low birth rates as well as child poverty, the reform was also meant to rationalise the benefits system while overcoming the historical fragmentation and uneven protection granted to families. Against this backdrop, the article contributes to the literature from two different angles. First, the study offers fresh empirical evidence of the path‐shifting scope of the reform, marking a rupture with the longstanding weak model of income support. Second, the article engages from an interpretative standpoint with the puzzling emergence of a cross‐party consensus around approval. Drawing from the comparative literature on institutional change and the modernisation of family policies, the article asks which factors made it possible—after decades of substantial inertia—to overcome path dependency through cross‐party agreement in Italy, providing an in‐depth, original examination of parties' positions throughout the legislative process and identifying key elements of agreement and conflict.

AbstractThe article explores how fatherhood in prison is conceived and supported by policy intervention in Italy. Despite the fact that, in 2020, 96% of adults detained in Italian prisons were men and half of them had at least one child, fatherhood in prison, a gendered space and institution where masculinities are (re)produced, is an underdeveloped research topic. Adopting a caring masculinity perspective, we focus on incarcerated fatherhood to investigate if and how Italian social programs that deal with incarcerated parents target fathers and, if so, to what extent they promote caring masculinities. To this aim, we will combine an analysis of social programs for incarcerated fathers in Italy, almost entirely run by third sector organizations, with discursive interviews with educators, welfare workers, and third sector stakeholders who participated in the implementation of a project for incarcerated parents in a north Italian prison. The results of our analysis show that involved fatherhood is not only denied to incarcerated men; it is also not allowed in an institution, such as a prison, where domination is the keyword.

The idea that older people should be active agents has dominated policy discourse across health, social care and housing that has a core care function. In the context of ageing population, the active and successful ageing paradigm risks to exacerbating existing inequalities and disadvantages that take shape along the life course and that cross several aspects of everyday life. The covid-19 pandemic shed light on areas of inequalities and social exclusion in old age. This paper, based on interviews with both representatives of services for older adults and people over 65 living in a city of Northern Italy, aims at exploring representations and (self)perceptions of ageing in the wake of the health emergency, with a focus on the re-definition of everyday life and habits, emerging needs, and on the weakness of services in front of an unprecedented and unpredictable situation. Results will show that public representations of ageing during the pandemic came into tension with older adult's self-perceptions, bringing to light dynamics of social exclusion and even of a "benevolent" ageism.

The article examines how Italian news coverage on Facebook has influenced the debate on cancel culture, linking it to phenomena like political correctness and framing it as an assault on freedom of expression. By analysing posts from 2020 to 2021 on the Facebook pages of major Italian newspapers, sourced through the CrowdTangle platform, the article explores the journalistic portrayal of cancel culture. It also considers how this media depiction has fostered an atmosphere of fear in a society where anxiety and unease, intensified by media representation, lose their tangible essence yet become increasingly pervasive. The thematic analysis identified two primary dimensions within the Italian journalistic discourse: the nature of cancel culture's targets (people/objects) and their temporal context (present/past). The results indicate that contemporary journalism constructs the notion of a "cancel culture", associating it with topics such as censorship, potential identity erosion, and the reinterpretation or denial of cultural and historical facets. This portrayal, intensified by the media, influences public perception and gives rise to growing feelings of unease and tension, culminating in a general climate of fear.