Among the many effects of the crisis, in Italy, there is the return of the centrality of the role of the family, after decades in which it had gradually faded away. To testify to it is a Coldiretti/Censis report "Crisis: living together, living better", which reveals how 31% of Italians live with their mother, and that 42,3% live within a maximum of thirty minutes of it. The percentage, 54%, of those who live a short distance from their close relatives is also very high.
Breaking down the figure by age group, it emerges that young people aged between 18 and 29 live in families in 60,7% of cases, thus raising the average, but people aged between 30 and 45 also live together (25,3% %) and between 45 and 64 years (11,8%).
Therefore, the myth of the Italian mammon is confirmed, but obviously there is more to this overbearing return of the role of family, which thus becomes a "subject of welfare" in a moment of crisis, helping, through the regrouping, the most needy members. More and more the family becomes a safety net, fundamental, according to Sergio Marini (president of Coldiretti), "in order not to sink many citizens into the difficulties of the crisis".
A return to tradition, this, which is enriched with other typical elements of national identity, such as the rediscovery of the pleasure of cooking at home, which sees a growing number of Italians, both men and women, spending more and more time in front of the stove to prepare dishes of all kinds, including foods such as yoghurt, bread, ice cream and preserves, prepared regularly, according to the report from 11,2 .XNUMX million people.
As a direct consequence of this process, the number of purchases of local products from farmers is also growing, and the number of Italians, 7,7 million, who bring home-cooked food to work, to save money, yes, but also to be sure of the quality of your meal.
The boom in purchases of zero-kilometre products does not erase a consolidated habit of the citizens of the Belpaese: lgrocery shopping at home, no more than a 15-20 minute walk from one's home, practiced by 85% of Italians. Beyond the relative convenience of these neighborhood shops (often and willingly completely uneconomical), it is the moment of aggregation that is important, so much so that the moment of shopping is considered the most important for forging relationships, even more than spiritual activities.
The same need, that of an aggregate ritual, also animates another increasingly important habit for Italians, that of the aperitif. A habit that involves 16,5 million citizens, of which 2,5 million on a regular basis, and which is enriched, especially during holidays, by the culturally and economically significant contribution of village festivals.
But the need for aggregation does not end only in physical places, it also extends to the web, where the number of Italians who are members of communities of various kinds is growing more and more, especially those that have food as their theme. The synthesis of the report, and the red thread that holds all the current trends together, is the search for security of the Italian citizen, who, lost in the face of the difficulties of the crisis, perhaps, and rightly so, feels abandoned by a State less and less social.
