Senza figli: intenzioni e comportamenti italiani nel quadro europeo

Childlessness arises from a heterogeneous universe, at one end of which there are childfree people, individuals who have taken a conscious and deli-berate decision against having children, and at the opposite end there are the involuntarily childless, those who would have liked children of their own but, for different reasons, were not able to realize their wish. The latter group prevails in Italy where the proportion of childless women among those born in the 1960s will very likely reach 15%, a percentage which is not however a new low, but rather similar to that of women born in the 1920s and 1930s. Compared to the North European countries, Italian couples do not easily give up having children even if oftentimes they have only one child.