Blog Layout

Parents, children and responsibility in Italy

David Moss • Jul 19, 2013

Angela Biscaldi   University of Milan

“la mamma mi sgrida soprattutto quando lei parla al telefono e io continuo a chiamarla” (bambino di 5 anni)

How do Italians understand their role as parents? What kinds of values do they seek to inculcate in their children?  I devised a research project to try to address these questions, making the concept of ‘parental responsibility’ my key focus. I wanted to explore how important the term was to parents today and how far they tried to make their children aware of their own responsibilities (and what kind they were). I used the town of Cremona as a case-study, interviewing kindergarten teachers and parents with children under six years old, and analysing more than a thousand drawings by young children of family life situations.

My main conclusion is that the notions of individual and social responsibility have largely disappeared from the explicit vocabulary used to educate children, despite the fact that for my generation, growing up in the 1970s, the call for responsibility  was largely diffused in both formal and informal contexts. Nowadays, parents and educators are either unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the term “responsibility”. They believe it is not an appropriate term to try to teach children (“una parola troppo grossa”, “un’affermazione pesante”); they prefer to see their educational role in terms of instilling competence and skills, encouraging profitable performance and well-being.

Indeed competence is almost seen as in opposition to responsibility, indicating a strong preference for individual advantage rather than collective orientation. As this mother (age 42, university education, white-collar worker, Catholic, separated, with three children aged 13, 11 and 5) responds to a question about whether her youngest child could be called ‘responsible’:

oddio responsabile mi sembra una cosa un po’ grande… autonomo… questo sì… autonomo, abbastanza indipendente… le sue cose le fa… poi sì… cioè un bambino di cinque anni può essere responsabile? Le chiedo… non so  (tono risentito) …io credo che sia un’affermazione molto pesante questa… io non penso che un bambino di cinque anni può essere responsabile, può essere competente, non responsabile

Children are required to learn, to expand their range of experience and, if possible, to be happy; they are not directed towards the importance of answering for their own actions and the consequences of those actions  in social contexts nor are they taught firmly to respect the rules of the community .

In my forthcoming book on the topic ( Etnografia della responsabilità educativa , Archetipo, Bologna, 2013), I analyse the disconnection between competence and responsibility in the  Italian process of primary socialization and education and point out the effects of this split in social interaction.

“ho disegnato quando gioco con il papà sul lettone e sotto c’è il computer: il papà lo tiene sempre lì” (bambino di 5 anni)

For example, it is particularly interesting to note how the stories of parents and educators underline how important it is to teach children to be able to defend themselves or to excel (“imparare a ridargliele”; “essere furbi”; “arrivare primi”, “vincere”) rather than to promote empathy and demand the respect of community rules. Moreover, educators find it difficult to hold someone responsible for events taking place in a kindergarten classroom like biting or beating and they use an inappropriate language: the children are not responsible (“troppo piccoli”); their parents cannot be held responsible (“non possiamo certo dare la colpa di quello che fanno i piccoli ai loro genitori”), but, surprisingly , even educators do not consider themselves as responsible  (“non sono certo io ad avergli insegnato queste cose”). What if  the diffusion of the notion of everybody’s and nobody’s responsibility, so typical of contemporary Italian society, deriving from this very early stage of socialization, establishes a social and emotional path from which it is very difficult subsequently to deviate?

04 Mar, 2024
Open until 14 April 2024, the exhibition Emerging From Darkness: Faith, Emotion and The Body in the Baroque is presented at Victoria's Hamilton Gallery (on the unceded lands of the Eastern Maar and Gunditjmara peoples), in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV). Unprecedented, and monumental in scope, Emerging From Darkness brings together an exceptional group of works from public and private collections in Australia. It was curated by Associate Professor David R. Marshall , Principal Fellow in Art History at the University of Melbourne, Dr Lisa Beaven , Adjunct Senior Research at La Trobe University, and Laurie Benson , Senior Curator of International Art at the NGV. Here two curators explain some of the project’s background and aims.
27 Oct, 2023
In Italy this year there has been no shortage of Manzoni celebrations, particularly in Milan . And in Australasia? Dr Stefano Bona , Lecturer in Italian Studies at Flinders University, Adelaide, on the lands of the Kauna nation, has lately been involved in creating a ‘special miniseries’ of radio programmes about Alessandro Manzoni. Now available for listening on demand are two longform interviews with Stefano Pratola at Radio Italiana 531 AM. Here Stefano Bona shares some background to this podcast project.
14 Sep, 2023
Announcing, with great pleasure, the winners of the 2023 ACIS Publication Prize for an established scholar, and the 2023 Jo-Anne Duggan Prize. ACIS awards both prizes every two years . In this case, each winning publication addresses the theme of mobility – a fast-evolving direction in Italian Studies research – and each brings forward a topic with clear contemporary significance.
04 Sep, 2023
The 12th Biennial Conference of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies will be held at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country, from Wednesday 3 July to Saturday 6 July 2024. The conference theme is ‘Italian Studies for Global Challenges: Transdisciplinary Conversations’.
24 Aug, 2023
Open to postgraduate and early career researchers, since 2018 the ACIS Save Venice Fellowship programme has been enlivening close links between Australasia and the city of Venice. Fellowship applications were suspended in 2022, for pandemic-related reasons. So it is a special pleasure to announce that Brigette De Poi has been awarded an ACIS Save Venice Fellowship for 2023. Already living in Venice to focus on her PhD project, Brigette shares some first reflections on her contact with Save Venice thus far.
08 Aug, 2023
Which memories are allowed to circulate in a particular culture – and which are relegated or silenced? What political logic is at play when a certain way of remembering is spelt out, even imposed? Matthew Topp was awarded an ACIS Postgraduate Scholarship in 2020, to source archival records for his doctoral thesis, which has the working title ‘ Ars Oblivionalis : A Study of Cultural Forgetting in Renaissance Italy’. Now returned from fieldwork, he shares a brief account of his PhD project and travels.
By Catherine Kovesi 02 Apr, 2023
Two promising early career scholars – Lauren Murphy and Julia Pelosi-Thorpe – were the recipients of ACIS Save Venice Fellowships. Delayed due to COVID travel restrictions, they were finally able to access their Fellowships in 2022. Here they both reflect on their time in Venice and the benefits of the Fellowship to their respective research projects.
By Catherine Kovesi 29 Mar, 2023
ACIS is delighted to announce that Professor Andrea Rizzi has been appointed the new Chair of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies. He leads a renewed Management Committee with several new appointees who start their terms of office this year.
By Catherine Kovesi 30 Jan, 2023
After a hiatus of three years due to travel restrictions, ACIS is delighted once again to be able to offer its Postgraduate Scholarships for Research in Italy. Two promising postgraduate students have been awarded scholarships in the current round: Brigette De Poi and Laura Di Blasi.
Show More
Share by: