Saturday,
October 14, 2006
Italian Traditional "Mama"
Competing with Modern Women
The ANNOTICO Report
ITALIAN
MUMS COMPETING WITH A MYTH
Legend of traditional 'Mamma' weighs heavy on
modern women
ANSA, it
by
Martin Penner .
October 14, 2006
Being
a Maserati among mothers is a tough task when you're
also trying to pursue a rewarding career. Chiara Monicelli, a 44-year-old art teacher from
A
new study by Censis, the Rome-based research
institute, confirms that most Italian women now aspire to rewarding jobs. But
it also shows how this clashes with their deep attachment to the traditional
role of wife and mother.
"Italian women have taken on board much of the ideology of the feminist
revolution, but in terms of self-realisation outside
the home most haven't really got very far," said Ketty Vaccaro, director of the Censis research project. The result, it seems, is that a
lot of women have the nagging feeling that they are not getting everything they
should out of life. FAMILY DEMANDS WIN .
Censis interviewed 1,200 women aged between 18 and 70
in order to learn how they saw their identity in
A
quarter of those questioned in the survey were mature women who had their own
families and were basically happy about this. But they still felt their life as
a mother had stopped them taking a lot of opportunities to achieve other
things.
Another
20% were youngish wives who cherished the dream of a glamorous, financially
independent, lifestyle but had decided to 'settle' for the traditional role.
The
Censis survey divided women into six broad categories
according to their position with regard to work and the family.
Only
one of these, representing 20.6% of the total, was composed of women who said
they had managed to get the best of both worlds. They were mainly well
educated, fairly well-off women in the middle age bracket. None of the others
could be said to be very satisfied with the way they had resolved the tension
between the calls of the family and the world of work. NO 'DINKIES'
.
One surprising aspect of the study, researchers said, was that there were
practically no women who said they would be perfectly all right without having
children and a family. "We just don't have dinkies here," Vaccaro said, referring to the 'Dual Income No Kids'
bracket of adult couples that is now a recognised
section of British and
One
of the six categories which emerged in the survey, representing 12.4% of the
total, was made up of single women. Many of them were young and relatively
successful in their work. But here too, the myth of the 'mamma' was clearly
evident. A majority of these women said they were, at the very least, 'open' to
new relationships and most wanted children.
Another
group was made up of young women still at university who saw raising a family
as a primary life objective.
The
sixth category consisted of older women, often pensioners, who had lost their
partner through death or divorce and for whom work was rarely an option.
Apart
from the sixth group, all the categories in the survey claimed to be reasonably
content with their lot. Asked when in life a woman was happiest, the most
frequent answer across the board was "when she's expecting a baby".
This, clearly, is a time when her status as 'mamma' is beyond all doubt.
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