ANTONIO BELLINGRERI

New Families as an Educational Emergency

1. New Couple Relationships

One phenomenon typical of late-modern Western societies is the extreme pluralisation of family

forms, a true and proper archipelago of families, so that: the family can no longer be reasonably

discussed in the singular, just as well as each couple seems to form a «mixed couple» 1. Observing

the data describing this phenomenon and any perceived trends, prompt a first general consideration,

from an educational perspective: the aspects related to couple formation, the choice of whether to

marry, the preferred family forms, all highlight a breakup between the older and the younger

generations. In short, we are confronted with a new culture of human relationships: this new culture

sets new symbols for the couple and the family.

The examination of a recent psycho-social survey conducted in Italy in 2011 and devoted to new

couple relationships2 introduces further insights in the planet family. The main find is that a couple

does not, by itself, make a family, that is, to live an affective or sexual relationship does not by itself

make a family. Moreover: an essential relationship between couple and family is seen as

controversial: in fact, to these non-family oriented couples, the definition and meaning of marriage

a conundrum. On the other hand, the emerging phenomenon of polyamory couples is symptomatic

of our age. A few years ago these could have been defined as open couples, since they would agree

to entertain simultaneous relationships with different partners, and to cohabit for limited amounts of

time. Interestingly, the interviewees who have chosen this type of experience motivate it with their

wish to be enriched by different people: each relationship is precious because it carries something

unique which no other relationship can supply.

Let us return, however, to the data from the survey: though a symptom of the contemporary

climate, the pluralisation of family forms cannot, by itself, convey a comprehensive image of the

changes under way. In fact, there also emerges another, increasingly widespread, type of couple,

which can be simply called the “post-modern couple”. This concept marks the crisis of the modern

couple pattern, the foundation of the intimate conjugal family, the autonomous origin and

1 C. Saraceno, Coppie e famiglie. Non è questione di natura, Feltrinelli, Milan 2012, p. 9.2 Cf. P. Donati (ed.), La relazione di coppia oggi. Una sfida per la famiglia. [XII] Rapporto Famiglia CISF [in Italy] 2011, Erickson, Trento 2012.

legitimation, also symbolically and ethically, of a family’s being a family according to a Christian-

bourgeois model. The post-modern couple is, rather, a “conversation couple”, within which each

partner can build his or her own self thanks to a (possibly uninterrupted) interactive narration. No

longer can the life of this couple be described as the simple fusion of two halves seeking each other

in order to reconstruct their original unity; the couple’s life originates from some preliminary

discovery of the other with whom one starts a relationship. This personal experience helps each

partner to accept the other’s limitations; and since the other is not thought of as one’s own half,

his/her exclusivity is questioned and challenged3.

This couple tends not to conceive of the love experience and path as a foundation or even only a

preparation to marriage and the family. It intends to be «pure relationship» to use an expression

(dear to A. Giddens) encapsulating the transformations of intimacy in the contemporary age. By

using a slightly different language, I would define this couple “post-romantic": from the empirical

surveys there emerges that the actual partners, who display different awareness levels, feel that

romantic or sincere love contains some ultimately destructive elements; that it generates such forms

of dependence as to remove the subject far from the freedom he/she sought in the first place. In

short, romantic love seems to carry some features tending to overcome it precisely as romantic love;

the post-romantic couple undergoes a sort of internal dialogue transforming blind love into cautious

love4.

2. New Family Forms

In order to advance our reflection, must consider some further psycho-social surveys that may shed

light on the changes affecting the family in Italy in the last few decades. Among the CISF biennial

reports collecting data on, and proposals for, interpreting the new phenomena, as well as monitoring

new courses of action5.

In Italy too, in the 1965-1975 decade, the planet family experienced the «great chasm», an

expression used by Evelyne Sullerot about France; this led to what she calls the «remue-ménage»,

the apical growth of a vast «disarray». The result, however, has not been the death of family as

advocated by some more radical authors from a sort of Darwinian perspective. Objectively enough 3 Cf. C. Saraceno, ibidem, pp. 46-56.4 Cf. A. Bellingreri, La famiglia come esistenziale. Saggio di antropologia pedagogica, La Scuola, Brescia 2014, pp. 27 ff.5 From the first report, on «L’emergere della famiglia autopoietica», in: P. Donati (ed.), Primo rapporto CISF sulla famiglia in Italia, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 1989; to the Seventh, in: Id. (ed.), Identità e varietà dell'esser famiglia: il fenomeno della «pluralizzazione». Settimo rapporto CISF sulla famiglia in Italia , ibid., 2001; and the Tenth, in: Id. (a ed.), Riconoscere la famiglia. Quale valore aggiunto per la persona e per la società? Decimo rapporto CISF sulla famiglia in Italia, ibid., 2007.

the most significant change can be described, as a transition from a normative to an affective family.

In terms of couple life, this means a weak pact, as well as the affirmation of a strong affectivity

within what can be called the couple’s self-generative myth; in terms of parenting, there is a greater

attachment to children and increasingly little planning of their lives, within the myth of the child as

the founder of the couple6.

I propose an interpretation of this major change as a transition from the nuclear to the post-

nuclear family, the latter encompassing a whole set of phenomena that vary considerably from one

another. We could attempt (as proposed by Donati) a morphogenetic description of them, by

connecting the transformations with origin and structuring process of new, differently defined

family forms. The underlying criterion could be the importance of the pact within each of these

family forms. In some of them, the couple choosing to make a family understands the pact as a non-

factual form (or an anti-factual one, not necessarily in the juridical sense); to other couples, the pact

can be a purely subjective rule or be accepted as a mere bureaucratic procedure. Given this

criterion, it could be to said that the only alternative family forms are the couples who refuse to be

defined by any pact whatsoever: these forms of cohabitation or, better, free unions, should properly

be defined as non-normed. One-parent families too can be considered alternative; as is well known,

usually the single parent is the mother. In a minority of cases, it is a young woman who has chosen

to carry her pregnancy to term, or a wife who has decided to live with one or more children after a

divorce or a separation7.

Several studies, however, talk about new family forms in general. The choice of one concept or

another is arguable, though it can be useful for stressing the relative novelty of the human

phenomena under scrutiny; the novelty is relative because several reputable studies on the history of

the family show that pluralisation and diversification have always occurred. It must be admitted,

however, that a number of phenomena progressively emerging in contemporary societies present

some hitherto unknown features. These can be reconstituted, or blended, families, also defined as

acquired families, or stepfamilies: they require specific competencies in the parents and the

educators accompanying them. Likewise, alternative too might be considered the families made up

of persons who have decided to form a couple (statistically speaking, the conjugated) without

wanting to generate children: they want to be childfree, or DINKS (i.e., Dual Income, No Kids)8.

6 Cf. M. Barbagli – M. Castiglioni – G. Dalla Zuanna, Fare famiglia in Italia. Un secolo di cambiamenti, il Mulino, Bologna 2003. There is a reference to E. Sullerot’s book, Le grand remue-ménage. La crise de la famille, Fayard, Paris 1997.7 Cf. G. D’Addelfio, Nuove famiglie. Percorsi, nodi e direzioni per l’educazione, il Pozzo di Giacobbe, Trapani 2012; earlier than this, cf. Iori, Separazioni e nuove famiglie. L'educazione dei figli, Cortina, Milan 2006. 8 Cf. R. Berger, Stepfamilies: a Multidimensional Perspective, Haworth Press, New York/NY 1998; also, D. Demetrio & F. Rigotti, Senza figli. Una condizione umana, Cortina, Milan 2012.

A non-alternative case, and certainly not a new one, is that of the self-styled one-person families

-- and here I would like to say, with respectful irony, that it is unclear why people who have chosen

not to live as a couple and, anyway, not to get married, should resort to the word “family” which, in

their case, means little outside of the registry office. Finally, an even more different case, especially

in educational terms, is that of those families where, in the absence of offspring, children are

adopted from different parts of the world. These are adoptive families – or, as they are sometimes

(rightly) called, international families. They are, I believe, truly new family forms in terms of their

commitment to the task of raising children; such are many families where extended parenting is

experienced (foster families)9.

3. The Couple’s Being a Couple

A discourse on the novelty of contemporary families and the opportunity they offer for an authentic

educational development can usefully reconsider those couples who describe their relationship as

“pure”, actually meaning that they attribute no specific sense to it; when talking about families, they

often say they are no family but simply a couple. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, these couples do

not effectively form families; they only form unions, so long as they choose to remain free from any

bonds, since they perceive bonds as hindrances. Effectively, a couple not forming a family could be

defined as non-normed. Such a couple is, in fact, a ménage, a simple cohabitation of persons who

love each other.

What can be said about these “pure relationships”? A phenomenological reflection highlights the

obvious limitation of this choice, that is, the patent denial of a fact. Indeed, any relationship implies,

by its very existence, the institution of a fiduciary pact, however minimal, between the partners. If

anything, the difference in the ways couples are formed is that in some cases the pact is understood

and experienced as a purely subjective or private rule, only valid for the parties involved; in other

cases it is a public or objective norm, as it is at least accepted by the historical community the

partners belong to. In fact, it cannot be otherwise: for a relationship to exist, it must be defined by a

norm, and this is a meaningful human experience; to be precise, there is a normed, i.e., a meaningful

relationship insofar as there is reciprocal acknowledgement of a pact. Free unions, therefore, are

always marked by a norm, which constitutes the meaningful criterion uniting the partners in the life

path they have taken together. To consider this source of meaning is crucial to any pedagogical

9 Cf. L. Pati (ed.), Famiglie affidatarie. Risorse educative della comunità, La Scuola, Brescia 2008.

reflection: i.e., whether it can be seen as an essential trait of a couple’s being a couple; and of a

family’s being a family10.

Such a need for the essential and the quest for an ontological explanation might stir some

perplexity, since an unmistakable fact emerging from the analysis is the extreme pluralisation of the

object of our study. Each couple, as we have seen, is a mixed couple; just as, rather than the family,

there exists an indefinite number of family forms, even as many as there are families.

To start with, this call to pluralism and ongoing change critically important for the pedagogue

too: couples and families must be viewed in their factual aspects and diachronic dynamics; the

educational work must always start from the most exact description of one’s experience as it

presents itself, minding its peculiarities.

However, no pedagogical commitment can be either concrete or focused without simultaneously

addressing the possibility and the need for a person’s individual and community life. This is an

exquisitely philosophical problem. Besides, at times of profound change the essence cannot always

be easily identified or defined: because of the transformations occurred, the true components of a

given fact tend to be misunderstood11.

I have attempted to deal with this issue elsewhere, in a study where the phenomenology of the

couple’s life and family community form the theoretical framework of a pedagogic anthropology of

the family, a science bordering with fundamental pedagogy and the philosophy of the human

person. I shall now argue the essence of these phenomena. The graphic variant I have chosen for

talking about the family underlines the fact that this term has no specific empirical references in

phenomenology; rather, it refers to the essence as perceived by an intellectual intuition of the

multiple empirical phenomena, by themselves plural and indefinitely differentiated12.

4. From Couple to Family

I shall limit myself to a few major points. The first is the encounter between two persons. This is

always, originally, an encounter between two living, and therefore sexed, bodies. Love is aroused

by an interest in the whole of the person encountered, body and heart – that is, the person’s soul. At

an early stage, the subject involved may become aware of being an object, rather than a subject,

overcome by passion and emotions and, in any case, acknowledging to be defined by an erotic or

loving intentionality. This sense offers itself to the subject’s awareness, despite lying within the

10 Cf. A. Bellingreri, ibid., pp. 59 ff, 139 ff.11 G. D’Addelfio, ibid., p. 186.12 About this interpretation of the phenomenological method, see R. De Monticelli – C. Conni, Ontologia del nuovo. La rivoluzione fenomenologica e la ricerca oggi, Bruno Mondadori, Milan 2008.

things, so to speak, before it reaches the consciousness; once it is acknowledged, though, the subject

is called to signify it, that is, to word it, thus configuring it as a particular kind of language. The

unique world of love, in fact, comes to be expressed the very moment it begins to unfold; it may

look novel even to the subject involved, displaying some secret aspects of the self, like the

revelation of a hitherto unknown text.

The moment love begins is probably the crucial one. It carries a difference that is bound to mark

the relationship and its meaning. Coming from within a pre-understanding yet articulated by a new

understanding, the loving intentionality can in fact be signified by the lover firstly and essentially as

an intensified personal life. If the subject, then, transforms all things encountered into experience

and the real possibility of self-promotion, the other person is given and simultaneously taken away;

so that it can be said that the encounter has effectively disposed of the relationship. This rather dry

phenomenological language describes the awareness process of a single; now, if the intentionality

of love is understood by a single – that is, if the single becomes a Weltanschauung –, not only is

there no relationship but the subject tends to think of its own self as autopoietic: happiness is

independent of any relationships, let alone any bonds; life is understood as a sort of expressive

individualism and commitment is focused on the aesthetic promotion of the subject’s life – the

beautiful Self13.

This is a real possibility, yet only a possibility. It is possible to have a different experience of the

other and of the self, and of the self in a relationship with the other. A loving intentionality can in

fact be experienced and signified through a different code: it can become a sort of unconditional

self-offering to the person to whom one is irresistibly attracted; to the extent of prompting the

decision to live, from that moment on and forever, for the other person – no longer for oneself.

Here, the loving intentionality is marked by an original form of gratuitousness: everything is done

for nothing, that is, without seeking, or affirming, the possibility of some kind of advantage; another

aspect is unconditionality, as there is the clear perception that resolving to give oneself to the other

without wanting to keep anything to oneself appears absolutely preferable14.

In my research in the field of anthropological pedagogy I have defined this possibility as the

truth of romantic love, as far as it seems to surpass, yet withhold, something of this form of love.

The core issue, however, is that at the very beginning of love the lover decides to be defined by

gratuitousness and unconditionality, even before knowing whether the beloved will reciprocate; at

that stage, in fact, the lover knows nothing about the beloved, who remains, effectively, an other

person. This is, I believe, a definite perception that marks the essence; it already is a mature fruit of

13 A. Bellingreri, ibid., pp. 51-54.14 The main reference for the phenomenological analysis of the beginning of an erotic relationship is J. L. Marion, Il fenomeno erotico. Sei meditazioni (2003), Italian translation by L. Tasso and D. Citi, Cantagalli, Siena 2007, pp. 17-27.

love displayed at the time of germination: in order to truly love, to remain in the reality of love, the

other must remain untranscendably other. This essential trait of love appears at the very beginning

of it: love is always love of the other; perhaps – and I think it is fair to highlight this point straight

away – this fact lies at the root of the idea that to love is always to love one’s other, i.e., it is the

woman for the man, and vice-versa15.

Nevertheless, a unilateral love, however strong and unconditional is not sustainable, and the

reason is that it demands to be recognised, to be loved for what it is, in its gratuitousness. It can then

happen, as it does, that the beloved is moved by the love received, recognising it as the most

desirable thing and becoming, in turn, lover. A second intentionality, that can be defined oblational,

then marks the relationship: by signifying love accepted and re-offered, it is valid and poses itself as

the exaltation of the relationship. It is a novel event, where being and meaning emerge: in fact,

because each party – lover and beloved – discovers oneself for the other in total reciprocity, each is

given the possibility to perceive, even as a hint, one’s own name. This is the novelty: the discovery

of one’s name, of one’s new personal identity affects the relationship so profoundly as to transform

it into a different, richer reality. We can understand it by re-naming it a “bond”, to mean that now it

no longer is an I and a close but separate you: the novelty lies in it being we. This new fact cannot

be assessed in terms of its individual components16.

Thus the phenomenology of the amorous couple as a couple highlights an irreducible

phenomenon. Now, as I have mentioned, and as the evidence demonstrates, the couple as such must

be distinguished from the family. Its phenomenological description, however, suggests a crucial

relationship between these two facts, so that it makes sense to look at the couple when talking about

the family; however, in order to adequately deal with the couple it is necessary to look at the family.

I would like to explain these affirmations by noting that, to a couple, the family is an immediately

available, somehow immanent possibility. In fact, a couple that is formed and conceived of as we

can choose to be defined by a symbolic principle as the source of each and every meaning of being

together; the validity of this principle lies in that it transcends the individuals’ emotions, intentions

and thoughts, and becomes, rather, the origin of shared affections, desires and views. We can call

this the gifting or generosity principle; again, to recognise and adopt it means to acknowledge a

bond that carries or offers a wider sense of either individual’s dimension, almost coinciding with a

novel, shared, unique world.

A couple originally and essentially defined by this symbolic principle is the real germinal

nucleus of the family. The family is already there even though the partners may decide to regard

15 J. Lacan, Lo stordito, «Scilicet», 1977, no. 4, p. 366; quoted in: M. Recalcati, Il complesso di Telemaco. Genitori e figli dopo il tramonto del padre, Milan, Feltrinelli 2013, p. 86.16 This is the main argument of an interesting book by E. Scabini and V. Cigoli: Il famigliare. Legami simboli e transizioni, Cortina, Milan 2000.

this principle merely as a subjective or private confidence pact; this takes place in the families

formed by cohabiting partners who promise within their hearts to belong to each other, on the

grounds of mutual trust and reliance. Cohabitations or free unions, I believe, are already actual

families, ontologically related to other family forms, whose foundation lies in one or another

articulation of the generosity principle. Among standard couples, however, there are some who may

choose to go beyond the simple confidence pact and resume their journey. Some couples may

choose to view the symbolic principle as the marriage institution: these are the couples who

contract civil marriage. They do so because they accept the mediation of the law in support of their

love and particularly, their fragility. They do so before witnesses from civil society: this eloquently

solemnises a pact that is no longer private, thus instituting the family as a social structure17.

Other couples interpret the gifting principle more radically: this happens when they perceive

that, somehow, the fact of loving each other is, from the onset, a sacred event in itself. In fact, it

takes to an area of reality that not only is of a different kind but that somehow is intangible by any

man or woman. The intentionalities that form the relationship and the bond grow out of this a

different kind of reality: the loving intentionality and the oblational intentionality are sublimated

whilst being re-encompassed within what I would simply call a sponsal alliance.

Thus, the couples who choose the sponsal alliance in full awareness and freedom, and contract

religious marriage (e.g., the Italians who choose a religious ceremony tend to marry according to

the Catholic rite, where marriage is understood as a sacrament) in some way experience and

perceive something which introduces them to the universe and the logic of the gift18.

5. The Family’s Being a Family

Nevertheless, we must return to the concept of norm or foundation, seeking further insights in the

phenomena we have already considered, together with their different levels of meaning.

The couple is a germinal nucleus that can be configured as family, thus becoming a unique social

structure. As we have seen, the 12th CISF Report on couple relationships highlights a phenomenon

that is new as to both size and supporting beliefs: an already significant number of people, now on

the increase, choose to form couples – but not families. This way of conceiving of the couple and of

life together is often defined by objectively positive moral ideals. We can thus particularly 17 Cf. P. Moreau, Mariage et parentalité. La reconnaissance de la médiation de la loi, in D. Bramanti (ed.), Coniugalità e genitorialità: i legami familiari nella società complessa, Atti del Primo Seminario Internazionale del REDIF, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1999, pp. 31-48.18 Cf. X. Lacroix, Il corpo di carne. La dimensione estetica, etica e spirituale dell'amore (1992), Italian translation by G. Zaccherini, Dehoniane, Bologna 1997; and Id., I miraggi dell'amore (2010), Italian translation by M. Porro, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2011.

appreciate the choice of those who begin a journey as a couple and, in the forms we have examined

(which can be considered stages in the journey), responsibly decide to remain open to the possibility

of procreating.

I think this is one of the most interesting traits of the present, late-modern society, in some ways

just as ground-breaking as we perceive it: what thousands of generations of men and women had

always considered a “natural” fact is now viewed as the result of a responsible choice. Perhaps,

though, the real novelty is the essential nexus linking the family to the couple from its very

beginning: if the norm which causes the family to exist and which forms its own meaningful

criterion is the generosity principle, the family can be understood and experienced as the full

blooming of this principle. Such blooming, in fact, can emerge as fulfilling the gift and its

accompanying logic. The gift, in fact, is the gift of life that can be transmitted, a real possibility

immanent to the relationship with the link and the alliance between a man and a woman; a pure gift,

offered without being requested19. From its nothingness, the gift causes a relationship with a third

party which, poetically speaking, always comes from elsewhere.

Within the perspective which I have been sketching, the possibility that from a couple life a

family may blossom depends on the choice of experiencing its constitutive intentionalities – erotic,

oblational and sponsal – within an ontological availability. I think this are the perspective and the

language to use, if we want to adhere to the data as much as possible; even though the language

issue demands a justification of the meaning/s of “family”, a term which, objectively, «signifies

many things» and thus risks sounding generic or sometimes ambiguous, as mentioned above.

I would like to make some remarks, in reference to the structural anthropology of C. Lévy-

Strauss, who talks about the family as a remarkably long-lasting phenomenon in human history; he

also defines it as a «universal» phenomenon, a «global social fact»; a «cultural archetype»; «an

anthropological invariant». However, the most significant comment, I think, is that every social

group, every society and every human culture present different family forms, so that – not only

from a cultural anthropological viewpoint but also from those of family sociology and psychology –

the family can be considered a «social construction». To gloss this comment, it can be observed

that, in every social group and through every generation in the history of mankind, family is the

term signifying a project which mankind has always carried with itself in its history; it always needs

to be fulfilled and is effectively articulated in the most diverse forms20.

How to define, then, the constitutive intentionality of this project the way it has always been

offered, i.e., as an open task to each successive generation? A (minimally) adequate definition has

19 Cf. X. Lacroix, Di carne e di parola. Dare un fondamento alla famiglia (2007), Italian translation by P. Gomarasca, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2008, passim.20 C. Lévy-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté. Paris, La Haye: Mouton et Maison des sciences de l'Homme, 1967, Italian translation by A. M. Cirese and L. Serafini, Feltrinelli, Milan 1969, pp. 39-50; 51-67.

been proposed by E. Scabini and P. Donati, in the different contexts of their respective disciplines

but from within a shared symbolical-relational paradigm of the family. The family is an ever-open

project marked by the constitutive intentionality of the transmission of goods, taking place on a dual

basis, i.e., between the male and female genders; on a triadic basis, i.e., between different

generations and stocks; on a cultural basis, as it always refers to symbolical universes and their

communication or transmission. Because of this, the family is the most eminently generative place

on a variety of levels: biological, economic, social, cultural and educational – which makes it an

original structure, both philogenetically and ontogenetically; it is original or unassimilable to other

structures; it is, somehow, necessary21.

The above statement should, of course, be supported by an important distinction: as a structure of

society, the family is necessary as to the reasons why it exists, since it assumes and tries to satisfy

the primary needs of a person. It is, however, a possible relational factor as to the aims for which it

is formed, because relationality (at best: a fruitful, vital relational life for individuals) is, by and in

itself, an aim yet to be reached. This distinction appears immediately crucial: it means that, when

limiting our reflection to the moral plane, the family is but a possibility, whose only cogency is

ethical, which can certainly make it desirable and yet, by the same token, unnecessary. Finally, and

to summarize, the continual re-founding of marriage and the family remains the task of each

generation and individual, a journey or a «moral career»22.

6. The Family as an Existential

In my pedagogical anthropology on the family I have expressed and analysed this critical result, by

proposing the thesis that the family – viewed as the blooming of a couple’s germinal nucleus – is an

existential, that is, a structure constituting the existence of a person23. On the one hand, this means

that it is possible to regard intra-family categories (i.e., all the relationships internal, or proper to,

family life) as an authentic potentiality for a person to be a son/daughter, husband/wife,

father/mother, brother/sister. Now, to say that such relational factors are existential is tantamount to

regarding them as more than mere biological, sociological or psychological phenomena. In fact,

when adequately understood by pedagogical anthropology, they are a possible gift which becomes

21 Cf, particularly, E. Scabini and V. Cigoli, Alla ricerca del famigliare. Il modello relazionale-simbolico, Cortina, Milan 2012; also, P. Donati, Sociologia della riflessività. Come si entra nel dopo-moderno, il Mulino, Bologna 2011.22 Janet Finch’s apt definition, quoted in C. Saraceno and M. Naldini, Sociologia della famiglia, il Mulino, Bologna 2007, p. 83.23 This is the central issue in my book La famiglia come esistenziale. Saggio di antropologia pedagogica, ibid., already formulated in the title almost as a keyword.

compelling in actual life, where it only exists as a task offered to the freedom and awareness of its

recipient. In short, relational factors can become ciphers of personal existence.

When approached from a different angle, however, this argument means that within the family it

is possible to find what I would like to call the genealogy of a person. In the family the person finds

its original ethos, that is, its unique emotional structure, the «dominant note» or «fundamental

chord» resonating with the world and shaping its particular grasp of its own being and existence.

Using a famous psychoanalytic topos, it could be said that thanks to the family a person receives a

mind that is heart as well as soul, the secret of a person, where all the threads holding that person’s

world are tied. However, it could also be said, according to Heidegger’s analysis of existence in the

life-world, that the family is the “there of being there”, the physical place where each and every

person is delivered to a definite way of inhabiting the world, within a particular time and a

particular space. The place of the original delivery is the person’s archaeology and teleology: a

world that is always given or found, which freedom can understand as a plexus of open possibilities.

That this should happen within one’s life, that an authentic potential for being should materialise

as the outlines of a life project resulting in the event of the self, is the specific task of education.

This has its initial, and somehow decisive, moment within the family, which is, properly speaking,

the original place of education. From my philosophical perspective, I have proposed a view of intra-

family relationships as forms of acknowledgement relationships: different but analogically

correlated ways of responding to the subject’s fundamental need to be acknowledged; perhaps this

is the name of the personal need which all family education enterprises try to address.

On the one hand, it is the subject’s need to be cared for, embraced and loved; it can be said that

in order to be it is necessary to be actively and effectively recognised as participating in being.

This affective side of the need to be acknowledged, which can simply be defined as the need for

intimacy, has its counterpart in the system of relational regulation, which we shall call the maternal

code, centred on the actual or symbolic figure of the mother; thanks to this system, because of the

love given to its singularity, the subject develops an awareness of its own personal value. On the

other hand, the need to be acknowledged is also the need to be introduced into reality, human and

cosmic, to access a symbolic universe. Any behaviour is human, as I have said, as far as it is

marked by a meaning either coming from reality or given by the subject. All proper human

existence needs the subject’s active acknowledgement of the world. This is the symbolic or ethical

side of the need to be acknowledged, which is a need for dignity; its counterpart is the other

regulation system, the paternal code, and the actual or symbolic figure of the father. Thanks to its

accompanying function and introduction to a symbolic universe, a person can inhabit the world –

or, at any rate, ethically inhabit it24.

From this perspective, the family appears as a system of relationships of reciprocal

acknowledgement: thus, all categories of family life can be understood as different forms of the one

relational need, i.e., analogical forms of a grateful relationality. Our very experience of having been

brought up suggests that in performing this task the family is not enough to itself: its work is

precious but always wanting in one way or another, always needing to be integrated through other

educational spheres. This holds true of any human family whatsoever. The whole of this essay is

aimed at exploring the true possibility to be; its phenomenological justification only stresses the

nexus of today’s phenomena with a constitutive dimension of reality which, nevertheless, remains

just a possibility. There are no excellent persons, just as there are neither perfect couples nor totally

accomplished families: there is an insuperable finitude, a fragility demanding care and support.

7. The Right of Any Family Form to an Educational Safeguard

In referring all the arguments presented here to the main theme of our reflection, I believe that each

and every family form has the right to an educational safeguard, because of the person’s

fundamental right to a grateful relationality, the first and ultimate term of any theoretical, practical

and poietic work of pedagogy as a human science25. However, specific educational attention and

care should be addressed to families that are obviously fragile. Now, any problematic family form

can be understood as the «enlargement of an aspect of reality which receives particular attention»26.

Consequently, the appropriate attitude for an educator is that of helping the couple to find out show

they can bring about the project that they carry as a couple and by which they want to be defined.

Let us consider, out of those families I have defined as alternative, the one-parent families, the

greatest majority of which are mother-centred. These are characterised by a social, and often

financial, fragility but also by an «educational absence», because of a «progressively vanishing

fatherhood»27. Single parenting is a problematic concept, as parenthood is an essentially dual

relationship; even though this deprivation does not generally damage gender identity, it can be more

difficult for these children to become adults. The task of the mother, as well as that of the educators

who accompany her, needs to be supported by an analysis of the crisis situation: a commitment to

24 Cf. A. Bellingreri, Senso e metodo dell’autorità educativa dei genitori (2008), Third annex in ibid., pp. 307-327.25 Cf. A. Bellingreri, La cura dell’anima. Profili di una pedagogia del sé, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2010.26 G. D’Addelfio, ibid., pp. 180-181.27 V. Iori, ibid, pp. 99-120.

the children’s education needs first of all the maternal mediation in sustaining their relationship

with the father: in fact, the mother’s most important role is that of recovering the paternal figure.

A different kind of problem is presented by step families. Here a “third parent” appears, either

mum’s partner or a “deputy-mum”; even the spouses find it difficult to accept and learn how to live

with their partner’s children: this has been called the litmus test of a «complex family clinic»28.

Now, the node on which we want to focus is the permanence of the educational task, irrespective of

the parents’ affective choices. Since «you can never divorce your children»,29 the condition to

preserve them from loyalty conflicts is to turn a divorce into a good divorce. This allows separate

co-parenting to assist the experience of dis-attachment in the children as they grow up, helping them

to process their sense of loss, their real or virtual bereavement; it requires the virtue of recognising

one’s errors and draw something good out of them, whilst being aware of the irreversibility of

words and actions.

I have already talked about the novelty represented by adoptive and foster families. In fact, both,

especially the former, have always existed. The new thing about them is a desire for paternity and

maternity that is exalted rather than inhibited by the limits of generationality. All sorts of difficulties

(and I am not referring to material difficulties) are often faced by the prospective parents of a child

who has already been born, usually abroad – this is why these new families are called

“international” and are probably the best example of mixed families30.

Foster families are the actual testing ground for extended parenting. Despite being temporary,

fostering can be authentic, provided it is supported by a mature, generative need that parents already

experience with their own children. It is a juridical instrument that ought to be encouraged for it

«can bring about the pedagogical need to build a family as an educating community». This is not,

however, a job for families alone, whose role is important for the educational success of local

communities and primary solidarity networks: it is these that, through services and informal

resources, help the growth of «widespread parenting»31.

Finally, I would like to conclude my reflection with some notes about same-sex couples, and

what are sometimes called “homosexual families”. I am aware that, if tackled from a humanist

viewpoint, this is an extremely complex issue. As things stand, many empirical studies still present

methodological difficulties, especially in selecting samples, and the reason is obvious: researchers

are often faced with «complex existential experiments», an uncharted territory still lacking shared

psychological and cultural codes.32 One aspect only seems clear to me: these are people who love 28 A. Oliveiro Ferraris, Il terzo genitore. Vivere con i figli dell'altro, Cortina, Milan 1997, pp. 49 ff., 99 ff., 135 ff.29 Cfr. L. Pati (ed.), Pedagogia della famiglia, La Scuola, Brescia 2014, in the introduction; this is also the main argument in N. Galli’s Pedagogia della famiglia ed educazione degli adulti, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 2000.30 C. the title of L. Sanicola (ed.): Adozione Generare un figlio già nato, Cantagalli, Siena 2012.31 L. Pati (ed.), Famiglie affidatarie. Risorse educative della comunità, La Scuola, Brescia 2008, pp. 11-14.32 C Saraceno, Coppie e famiglie. Non è questione di natura, ibidem, p. 110.

each other, so their right to have a particular affective life must be defended. This could be called,

in this case, the right to homophily, one which is ontologically and logically similar to what I have

proposed to call the right to a grateful relationality.

Nevertheless, an intimate affective relationship is a loving friendship, not a spousal couple or a

family. Effectively, the sexual difference becomes secondary or is totally annihilated because the

procreative function of the relationship becomes secondary or is eliminated: for this is a couple

unable to find the origin of its meaning in the possibility to generate generations.

One last note, relative to adoptions requested and obtained by two cohabiting same-sex persons:

it is the child who suffers the «loss of the [dual] relational code»; from an educational perspective,

«that the specific male and female functions should be omitted» remains a problem33. I believe that

we must consider, with moral and intellectual honesty, that there are difficulties in this area.

This attitude, in fact, helps detecting in our time, and realistically embrace, a new humanism of

intimacy, whereby the sacred appears to «stably reside in the hearts of those who love each other»34.

We can then look at the family with a new sensibility as an eminently generative and re-generative

place; a magnificent libidinal and symbolic program, perhaps the greatest operator of happiness

and meaning in human society.

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