I thought the readings for week two were really
interesting because they talked about how the Italian family has changed and
touched on how different America's view of italian families is from reality. We
discussed this a little bit in my Italian 1001 class this past semester so it
was interesting to see actual articles and testimonies about it. The Americans
view Italian families as huge groups that are fiercely loyal to each other and
spend most of their time in each others company. However in reality, they are
now much smaller and are more likely to live longer distances from each other.
I was also intrigued by the fact that the immigrant families have a closer
resemblance to the traditional italian family than the actual italians.
I
was shocked by the case we read about the parents taking legal action against
their child to get him to move out. Everyone knows about the idea of an italian
mommy's boy but in America typically people want to move out of their parents
house as fast as possible. However, we have had the same shift towards staying
slightly later because of college. With college being so expensive and the
economy not being good it makes more sense to stay with your parents until you
can really get your feet on the ground. Also the case about the child abuse of
the mommy's boy was really thought provoking. Most of the time you think of
child abuse as hostile not too much love yet it appears they can both be
extremely dangerous.
