Family and Kinship

In 1950 over 42 percent of Italy’s active population was involved in agriculture, one of the highest proportions in Europe. During the next two decades, Italian immigration to Canada was primarily drawn from this rural sector as economic dislocation reduced the agricultural population to 19 percent. The fact that it was foremost a rural-to-urban movement is fundamental in understanding the nature of the Italian-Canadian family, whose structure and values have been grounded in a relatively recent peasant-based past. This was no less true of Italy’s industrial working class, much of which was only a generation removed from the countryside, so that the bonds of paese, neighbourhood, and kinship were often as alive in the city as in rural areas.

A complex interplay of forces lay behind the characteristic Italian kinship forms, ranging from ancient Roman roots (for example, ritual kinship and patriarchy) and Catholic teaching (the sanctity of marriage and pregnancy) to incomplete state formation, which reinforced reliance on kinship as a socio-economic resource. In addition, Italian kinship rested on the bedrock of a Mediterranean agricultural society that viewed the family as a corporate group whose ideal was to maintain itself as a self-sufficient unit of production and consumption. While this goal was often given up with emigration, the internalized values associated with it were not.

In Italy the word famiglia referred both to the nuclear family of reproduction and to the extended family, which included all relatives to third cousins, the degree of consanguinity within which the church forbade marriage as incestuous. In between lay the important cluster of familiari, close relatives and friends who lived nearby, with whom individuals interacted frequently and who formed cooperative work groups. Such parties, which could number dozens of people, were necessary at critical junctures in the agricultural cycle when the task at hand was more than could be handled by a family alone: sowing, harvesting, and threshing, as well as the making of wine and the annual hog slaughter.

The kinship system was also open to the recruitment of non-relatives through the ancient institution of ritual kinship, or comparaggio, whereby close friends or patrons could be brought into the family circle of familiari. The church sanctified the relationship through the recognition of godparents at baptism, sponsorship at first communion and confirmation, and the call for witnesses at marriage. As an ascriptive quality, kinship embraced all relatives and compari in an elaborate system of rights and obligations founded on trust, which varied in intensity with the degree of consanguinity. Above all, rights and obligations had as their aim the provision of security through mutual aid. This was particularly important in southern Italy, where farmers were not only subject to the usual vagaries of nature but also to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and droughts from the Sahara. Moreover, the informal provision of security was important because modern state formation came late to the peninsula, was incomplete, and was often punctuated by intense class antagonism.

Rights and obligations involved corporative work strategies, material aid in time of need, solidarity in the face of exploitation, and the betterment of kin members. Typically, the kindred group was large, encompassing hundreds of people, and hence individual members had considerable choice with regard to those with whom to enter into an active relationship. Whether people interacted closely or not, there were certain expectations that existed by virtue of the kinship tie itself, and, where these lay dormant, they could be reactivated when the need arose. Immigration to Canada created one such need for the mobilization of kinship resources, and indeed kinship ties were often expanded and strengthened in order to meet the challenges of emigration, settlement, and integration. Unlike other major movements to Canada, such as the British, Ukrainian, or Jewish, which were sometimes promoted by government or philanthropic agencies, Italians essentially had to rely on their own resources in order to accomplish the impressive transplantation that took place during the first two decades of the present century and after World War II.

Among the indigenous resources used by Italians, traditional kinship, with its concomitant system of rights and obligations and its elasticity when the need arose, was foremost. Strong kinship ties made possible chain migration. Indeed, from the war’s end until 1967, when new regulations were introduced, 90 percent of all Italian immigrants were sponsored by relatives. While Canadian policy allowed an average of 25,000 Italians to enter annually throughout the 1950s, this was far less than the number that relatives were willing to support and the yearly backlog reached into the tens of thousands. The process required that the sponsor have sufficient financial savings and assume the care of a relative for a period of five years in the event that the new immigrant was injured, sick, or unemployed. This was a considerable obligation, especially if the sponsored relative was outside the immediate family. As well, relatives facilitated immigration by sending prepaid tickets or loans, providing advice about the voyage, meeting newcomers at the train station upon arrival, and orienting them to the new society. Of basic necessity was the role played by sponsors in the provision of jobs and accommodation. In Montreal over half the Italians who bought homes in the 1960s did so in neighbourhoods with relatives or other compatriots, and almost the same proportion worked with other Italians. In short, strong kinship ties not only made possible the pattern of chain migration but also underlay the residential and occupational concentrations that became noticeable in Canadian cities.

There is little doubt that considerable change occurred in the Italian family after immigration. In Italy it was characterized by being father-dominated, but mother-centred; by a division of roles whereby men were essentially seen as providers and women as nurturers; by the salience of collective honour embedded in the male’s ability to maintain the family economically and the female’s to remain chaste; by the centrality of children and the necessity of parents to provide for their sistemazione (setting up as adults); by the attitude of respect assumed of children towards their elders; and by the view that the family was a corporate body that could prosper through the complementary contributions of its members – that the family was like “the fingers of a hand.”

Immigration to an industrial setting led to changes in this constellation. While female work outside the home certainly had not been unknown in Italy, employment in factories (especially in clothing and textiles) became prevalent with settlement in Canada. In 1961 one-third of adult Italian females in the country had entered the workforce, a proportion that rose to almost one-half twenty years later. Since wage labour now characterized many women in addition to men, the Old World differentiation of roles underwent noticeable evolution. As women’s contributions to the family economy became more significant, so too did their role in decision making. More fundamental was the change that occurred between parents and children. The public school system embodied a world-view that emphasized individualism, equalitarianism, and competitiveness; it called into question the corporate ethos of the Italian family and compromised the traditional attitudes of respect and obedience expected by elders. The new sexual mores and expectations of daughters especially became a source of tension as adolescents sought to assume the dating practices and career options of mainstream Canadian society.

While the traditional position of husbands and fathers was challenged by immigration, men adapted. Indeed, to the extent that immigration allowed them better to fulfil their roles as providers, it enhanced rather than threatened their sense of self. Nowhere was this change more evident than in the tremendous effort placed on the attainment of home ownership. The acquiring of a home was intimately linked with family values since it was regarded as necessary for the family’s cohesion. As the main breadwinners, men took pride in its accomplishment, the concrete focus it provided to family life, and the contribution that this would make towards the sistemazione of the next generation.

Moreover, both fathers and mothers adapted to the new values and increased individualism of the children. Especially, they came to realize that individual goals and careers were not necessarily at odds with allegiance to the family. Indeed, parents encouraged individual success both in the interest of their children and also because it would reflect favourably on the family unit, thus contributing to its good standing.

Such adaptation on the part of parents, especially fathers, has been most striking in the case of female education. Whereas women were discouraged in the first decade of post-war immigration from pursuing an education since they were expected to fulfil their traditional roles as wives and mothers, by the 1970s many parents actively encouraged their daughters and took pride in their accomplishments. This change was a major factor in explaining the dramatic increase in the percentage of Italian-Canadian women with a B.A. or higher degree, from 3 in 1971 to 9 percent in 1981, about the same as the rate for males (10 percent) but greater than Canadian women as a whole (6 percent). A similar adaptation on the part of parents occurred with respect to the sexual mores of daughters. Again, behaviour that would have been unthinkable in the early settlement years has become widely accepted. Not only dating and party going but also unchaperoned holidays and living in college residences are increasingly seen as part of maturing, of reaching adulthood.

The growing tendency to adopt North American urban patterns continued with the succeeding generation of Canadian-born offspring. In the second generation both husband and wife were likely to have careers, a high degree of convergence in sex roles so that both were involved in domestic chores and child rearing (though not necessarily equally), and mainstream attitudes towards parenting. As parents, the Canadian-born took a psychological, rather than disciplinarian, attitude towards the raising of children, placed them in day care rather than have relatives mind them, encouraged individual development, discussed sexual matters and accepted premarital relations, and tolerated intermarriage across ethnic lines.

But although the Italian-Canadian family adjusted to mainstream patterns, it was far from assimilated. Primarily, it has been distinguished by the degree to which it has conserved traditional values in contrast to the growing relativism in mainstream society. In 1981, 54 percent of all Italian Canadians (of single origin) were married, compared to 47 percent for Canadians as a whole, and, along with other Mediterranean groups, they had the lowest percentage of divorced and separated individuals: 2 percent, compared to an overall Canadian rate twice as great.

A major study conducted around the same time in Montreal involving 400 Italian adults found that over 73 percent were opposed to divorce, almost 78 percent to abortion, and almost 66 percent to artificial contraception (though in this last case there was a 9 percent difference between males and females). With regard to family size, almost 40 percent of the group had 2 children and 31 percent had 3, figures that surpassed the overall Canadian proportions by 10 and 50 percent respectively. Finally, 81 percent of Italians believed that they had a responsibility to take care of aged parents, a conviction reflected in the fact that over half lived in multi-family households. Another sociological survey published in 1981 showed that, while both Italian Canadians and members of the so-called charter groups identified family security as a high priority, the former gave considerable more weight to this objective than the latter (by a difference of 7 percent). Moreover, whereas significantly more Italian Canadians chose the related goal of prosperity (by a difference of 16 percent), the obverse was true for self-development as an objective (a difference of 7 percent). Interestingly, the priority placed on family security by Italian Canadians was confirmed among both immigrant parents and their adolescent children, and with both males and females. The emphasis on home ownership was maintained between the immigrant and second generations, and, while a good proportion of the latter attended college, the most common areas of study were those that offer clear-cut careers without graduate training – teaching, law, and business administration. The desire to begin their own family formation and propertied status precluded specialization in the arts and humanities, where careers are uncertain.

Various evidence, then, indicates that, while substantial changes have occurred in the Italian-Canadian family in the direction of mainstream patterns, significant continuities have persisted. Attitudes towards marriage, children, and the aged all contributed to a constellation of traditional family values that still distinguishes Italian Canadians from the mainstream. The maintenance of family values and patterns is connected to the issue of intermarriage. Italians in Canada have been relatively open to marriage outside the group, which grew steadily throughout the post-war period. In Toronto by 1980, endogamy had decreased from 91 percent among Italian immigrants to 64 percent for the second generation and 29 percent for the third. However, the relationship between increasing intermarriage and the degree of cultural slippage is far from clear-cut. For the ethnic group as a whole, the great majority of marriages were endogamous, and for the minority who married outside the group, more men did so than women (about 10 percent). Since women tended to be the principal transmitters of distinctive values, the amount of cultural slippage was more limited than if intermarriage had been evenly distributed between the sexes. Furthermore, even among males, it did not automatically lead to cultural loss. Especially in the larger Italian communities, it resulted in integration into the Italian-Canadian cultural world rather than the mainstream.

Most significant, however, is the fact that 70 percent of all mixed marriages were with other Roman Catholics, further limiting the degree of cultural slippage. There can be little doubt that continuity in the value system of Italian Canadians has been to a large degree maintained through the influence of the church. Its moral teachings reach Italian Canadians through the pulpit, the Catholic school system, and various media, ranging from church periodicals to television programs. For Catholics, what distinguishes humanity is the possession of a God-given soul. Birth, sexual union, and death are natural processes that also emanate from God, are sanctified by the church, and are not to be tempered with by humankind. While the church’s teachings run against the grain of contemporary relativism and utilitarianism, they offer a powerful religious view of the world and a coherent moral system that a majority of Italian Canadians subscribe to, and this fact is reflected in their personal values. Indeed, for most Italian Canadians, Catholicism is a major component of their cultural identity and self-definition.

Another focal point of Italian-Canadian identity is the sense of famiglia beyond the household. Close-knit familiari groups that in the village fulfilled important social and economic purposes were often transplanted upon immigration. The rural work party was maintained in the annual processing of wine and traditional meats and increasingly in the exchange of labour and skills in renovating, upgrading, or expanding houses. With the movement out of Little Italys, familiari groups were often reconstituted in the suburbs, and the pattern of rights and obligations maintained.

Likewise, the extended family, including in-laws, uncles, aunts, and cousins, was often able, in large part if not entirely, to reform in the Canadian city through chain migration. As in the village, in Little Italys kindred interacted frequently through attendance at church and feste (religious feast days), market going and visiting, the rites of passage, and the network of rights and obligations. Interaction among kin, as well as with paesani, was prevalent throughout the 1950s and helped to ameliorate some of the harsh pressures of adjustment to the new environment. The 1960s, however, witnessed the gradual waning of this daily camaraderie.

Residential mobility could not but dilute the intensity of kinship ties. Although familiari were often able to move close together and the telephone and the automobile overcame distances, the intimate sense of community between kin and paesani who had shared the same neighbourhood did not survive intact. Moreover, the 1960s witnessed the growth of a second generation, so that relationships between parents and their maturing children (and later grandchildren) came to supplant the close links between immigrants. Further, integration brought forward a new layer of personal ties with others, particularly for the second generation, which contributed to the weakening of kinship cohesion. Lastly, evolving differentiation with respect to socio-economic status added another dimension to the loosening of bonds between kin, as well as with paesani.

Nonetheless, kinship ties proved resilient enough to withstand the passage of time. Above all, connection and identification with relatives and close paesani outside the immediate family were maintained by the traditional rites of passage sanctioned by the church: baptism, first communion and confirmation, marriage, and funerary services. The manner in which the sacraments were observed changed considerably in the New World. Celebrations became more elaborate, many more relatives and friends were invited, and comparaggio came to encompass an ever-expanding circle of non-paesani. The occasions increasingly involved large rented halls, multi-course meals, professional musicians, and the like, underlining their importance as social events. As day-to-day contact between kindred decreased, the salience of the rites of passage increased, and they acted as a collective strategy to sustain kinship cohesion.

The occasion that changed and expanded the most was marriage, which came to incorporate the North American practice of a bridal shower. Marriage marked the establishment of a new family within the kindred and community, and the substantial gifts of goods or money given at the shower and the wedding continued the practice by which Old World kin were expected to contribute towards the sistemazione of newly-weds. The etiquette of rights and obligations determined that kin and paesani would return the favour of their hosts at the earliest opportunity; hence a self-perpetuating cycle of rites of passage celebrations could bring together the extended kindred and close paesani several times a year. The expense and elaborate celebration of marriage highlighted for Italians the centrality of familial ideals. For the hosts, making a good impression was a sign of generosity and standing, which would bring them honour and respect within their community.

More recently, Italians have appropriated a uniquely North American and secular practice which, like the wedding reception, can bring together several hundred kindred. This is the family picnic, in which relatives come together in the summer for traditional food, sporting competitions, and games for children. Among large extended families, it is a practice that has tended to expand over the years. Because of its informality and stress on entertainment, it has gained popularity especially among the Canadian-born younger generation. Moreover, these yearly get-togethers have been successful in uniting Italian Canadians with their American kinfolk. Hence, the adoption by Italians of a uniquely North American element of popular culture has acted to perpetuate traditional social patterns and values regarding family and kindred.