Introduction How can a single decision, regarding staying in the place of origin or of moving to another place, can influence the course of your life, the possibilities that you will have, the goals that you will achieve, the people that you will meet, and the cultures that you will come across? This is one question, among the various queries, which has motivated the process of researching.
Patterns of leaving and returning home Profound demographic change in patterns of leaving and returning home has arisen since the 1960s. Today, more consideration has been paid to bringing questions related to age norms to light. During a survey by Richard A. Settersten Jr. about the time to move out of the parental home (Nauck et al., 2017), the majority of respondents perceived an age deadline for leaving. The reasons cited for this age limit were mainly related to the development of self and personality. Since the mid-1980s, changes in patterns of leaving and returning home have emerged as important social concerns in the media and among policy makers (Nauck et al., 2017). While many of the transitions associated with entry into adulthood have changed, patterns around leaving home and returning home, in particular, have changed profoundly. This picture became more complex when it started to consider and include the interactions between race, sex, marital and parental status, employment status, and educational enrollment (Nauck et al., 2017).
Kinship systems and welfare regimes Leaving the parental home is a significant event in the passage between youth and adulthood, at both an individual and societal level (Huang, 2013, cited by Settersten, 1998). The work, “How kinship systems and welfare regimes shape leaving home: A comparative study of the United States, Germany, Taiwan, and China,” written by Bernhard Nauck, Nicolai Groepler and Chin-Chun Yi, provides explanations about societal differences in the process of leaving the parental home, examining the cases of four specific countries. It proposes hypotheses between societal characteristics such as a kinship system, welfare regime, and home-leaving behavior (Settersten, 1998). The results, conducted through data analyses, demonstrate the prevalence of home-leaving being the highest in the United States among the four countries. The outcomes highlight the cultural differences between home-leaving in collectivistic, patrilineal societies (China, Taiwan), and individualistic, bilineal societies (USA, Germany) (Settersten, 1998). The pursuit of an educational career can be an incentive to leave the parental home, while a country’s geography, wealth, and policies generate country-specific opportunity structures for leaving home. On the other hand, kinship systems shape normative intergenerational obligations which may constitute barriers to young people’s mobility (Windzio & Aybek, 2015, cited by Settersten, 1998) or imply a parental obligation to provide accommodation in the phases through adulthood (Settersten, 1998).
Testimonies The two different conditions, which can influence each other, have a strong response in the reality framework, reflecting the choices made by the collected testimonies.
Paolo, one of the two participants, resides in a small village in Tuscany, Montalcino. He was born there and never moved from the place where he grew up. Raised by a baker and a woodcutter, now eighty-five years old, he grew up in the 1940s, living in a village where there were no factories. For this reason, many peers decided to go abroad, to countries such as Germany and Belgium. The changes in the village came with the usage of the territory for agricultural purposes, mostly for the production of wine. After finishing compulsory education, Paolo decided to search for a job. His vision, as that of many people of his time, was to find a secure job without inspirational purposes. Moving from the village was not really understood as necessary, if not for work reasons. In his twenties Paolo had the opportunity to move to Milan for a job on the railway which could have afforded him a more stable salary. However, the environment and the chaos of the big city did not appeal to him. Looking back on that situation, he understood his affection for Tuscany. Paolo believed he had everything necessary there, due to the fact that he had always worked hard. Years later, he created his own family in the same territory. In Paolo’s perspective, work and family created a stronger sense of attachment to the village. As he grew up, in the 1940s and 1950s, Paolo witnessed technological changes and the effects of war. He lived his life in post-war conditions in an atmosphere of survival and worked to meet the needs of his family without having to move while trying to live a long and happy life. The conditions and the context surely influenced the choices he made. The village of Montalcino, in Paolo’s view, is a nice and quiet place. He is mostly grateful for the possibility of remaining in the territory and of creating his own family, who also decided to settle and raise their families in the town and surrounding area. In his opinion, over time, the population of the town has changed, due to the migration of families in search of better and different workplaces. However, Montalcino is also an example of a village, which is a lockstep to the evolving society, showing the recent presence of cultural diversity. The town demonstrates its connections between its inhabitants with the common use of nicknames in dialect, thus, highlighting the importance of bonds. The dialect, used by the same community, creates a sense of belonging. In the description proposed, the influence of the family in shaping Paolo’s social behavior within the context is evident. He repeated various times that he would make the same decisions again stating,
“I have created with little in order, today, to give more to my granddaughters (2024, 6th June).”
Paolo M.
A respective point of view is given by the testimony of Sofia, a Sicilian girl who decided to move from her city of origin, Gela, to the capital of Italy, Rome. She decided to transfer from her region for two main reasons: the first is the absence of a working future in the engineering sector and the second is the strong imprint of the region with its traditional mentality. Not all but most of the people who continue to live in Sicily, according to Sofia, are settled in that cultural perspective, highlighting the strong importance of values such as family and health. The move, which she carried out at the age of eighteen, was approved by her family, giving her the possibility that they could not afford before. The displacement was necessary also in order to avoid great difficulties in commuting from one city to another due to the inconvenient public transportation in the region. Before her migration, Sofia asked herself what could be one reason, except for her family, to remain in her city. She believed, and still continues to do so, that it is to highlight Gela’s potentialities. Most of her friends who decided to remain found a job there, while the ones that left did so for educational purposes or to change environment. Gela is an example of a city with different cultures. Nonetheless the conviviality with the people coming from different cultures is limited, mainly due to stereotypical perceptions. After some years in Rome, Sofia observed how the context in which she grew up influenced her behavior and opinions with its relative positive and negative sides. She started to appreciate the sense of conviviality more firmly in the context of Gela. She observed the limit of it in a city like Rome, more reluctant, although it has an apparent greater multicultural presence. Among the positive aspects of moving from the place of origin, Sofia emphasized the possibility of understanding different realities. The transfer influenced her life in the small things, from knowing multiple situations and debunking stereotypes, to developing a survival modality for independence. But, she also observed various negative aspects, such as starting a new life in loneliness, experiencing the indifference and the discrimination towards people coming from the regions located in the southern part of Italy. From Sofia’s perspective, the richness of a region like Sicily resides, like other regions, especially in its dialect. She emphasizes dialect as a personal fortune. In few words, Sofia also shows awareness of family’s influence in shaping her social behavior through education and other values such as friendship. In the meantime, however, she also detaches from some of these values, developing her own identity, since she is a woman from a younger generation who has witnessed different experiences. For this reason, if she could go back in time with the consciousness of today, she would surely make the same choice of moving to Rome.
Role of family
In the decisional process of settlement, welfare regimes and kinship systems are some of the variables that are taken into account. Recent studies on kinship systems underlined, more in depth, the role of family and its influence on the same decisional processes. By definition, parents play a key role in emerging adulthood. Young people may derive material and emotional support, advice, and knowledge for their parents. Parental involvement, ranging from a widespread sense that the parent cares for the child to direct intrusion in establishing the roles of adulthood (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). Research has documented an increase in contact between young adults and their parents over the past few decades. Communication technologies over the past three decades have accompanied the increased frequency of contact between adults and parents. Popular perceptions suggest that young adults are currently overly dependent on their parents (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). In the context of industrialized societies, young adults today experience a more protracted entry into adult roles than in the past. Prolonged education, searching for new opportunities, and delayed entry into more permanent relationships characterize “emerging adulthood” for many young people (Arnett, 2007, cited by Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). In addition to providing support and time to offspring, many parents provide room and board via coresidence in the same household. In countries that view leaving the parental home as a marker of the entry to adulthood, coresidence may be viewed as a form of support characteristic of delayed independence. It is probably not a coincidence that public policies and values go hand-in-hand among modern democracies, where elected officials represent the population values. The net effect is that coresidence patterns are multidetermined (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). In many European countries, rates of coresidence between young adults and their parents have declined since the mid-20th century (Treas & Gubernskaya, 2012, cited by Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). Moreover, coresidence is variable across nations. Newman and Aptekar (2006, cited by Seiffge-Krenke, 2013) in a study of intergenerational coresidence across six European nations, found that rates of coresidence were highest in Southern European countries, such as Spain and Italy, where 60% of grown children reside with parents, and were lowest in Scandinavian countries, such as Sweden, where only 10% of grown children reside with parents. These patterns get feedback since they reflect the government policies, availability of housing, the job market, and cultural values in the respective countries (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). Parents’ own socioeconomic backgrounds, including their education, income, and occupations, are all predictive of the type of education children receive and their roles in the workforce. Parental education affects these outcomes through role modeling and socialization (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). Recent literature also reveals studies that focus on the premise of overparenting (Munich & Munich, 2009; Segrin et al., 2012, cited by Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). The premise is that parents are too involved in their grown children’s lives, preventing the child from making independent decisions or experiencing the consequences of his or her actions. The new stage of emerging adulthood is predicated on strong connections to parents and continuing parental support (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). At this point, it is evident that the shifts in parental involvement with young adults have evolved slowly over the past two decades, beginning in the mid-1990s, due to declining family sizes and increased parental investment in fewer children. Over time, these changes in parental involvement have intensified to technological advances and changes in the economy that necessitate prolonged education for entry-level jobs. Despite popular media attention to the idea of overparenting in young adulthood, data suggest that parental support is beneficial to young people in gaining a foothold in adulthood (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). Cultural conceptions of parental involvement have not kept pace with these changes and many parents and grown children hold onto an outdated concept of parental autonomy (Fingerman, Cheng et al., 2012b, cited by Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). In many countries and cultural groups, young adults are expected to help support parents as well. The reciprocal involvement of young adults with their parents represents a form of commitment to family of origin that generally persists throughout adulthood. In these families, emerging adulthood may bridge a continuity of high family involvement and support of parents that starts in adolescence and persists through midlife (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013).
Conclusion What are the reasons that influence individuals who stay near the place where they grew up as opposed to the ones who push towards leaving the same community? This is one of the research questions which was used as a starting point for conducting the project. The general work aspired to report some of the many and complex factors which influence people’s decisional process of settlement, such as welfare regimes and kinship systems with the later focusing on the role of family. The framework is thus enriched with the information about the effects and consequences of their decisions, as received in the testimonies. Both witnesses recognized the influence of the place in which they grew up that consequently shaped their identity and the respective strengthened attachment to the dialects.
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