La formazione delle famiglie. Sociologia del diritto di famiglia (prima parte)

The present work is the first of three contributions dedicated to the study of socio-demographic behavior. The author has written this text with the intention of providing students of Sociology of Law with background materials useful for the study of the Sociology of family law. The second part will deal with " Declining birth rates and population aging " and the third, due to appear in 2015, with "Family instability, separation and divorce" The transition from a specific dominant model of family, characterized typically up to the 1960s by a married couple and their children (the so-called "nuclear family"), to a plurality of different and complex family configurations, has been accompanied by profound changes in the way to found a family. With specific reference to Italy and its regions, and with a comparative perspective extended to Europe, in the main part of the text special attention is given to the rapid contraction of marriage rates, the delay in the age at marriage, the resulting increase in births outside marriage.