Abstract
Drawing on the issues aired and discussed in the workshops and public events organized by the interdisciplinary AHRC-funded project “La Mamma: Interrogating a National Stereotype,” this chapter explores some of the differing ways that Italian mothers, both in Italy and in its diaspora, have been represented over the last century and a half. It focuses in particular on one of these many representations, the stereotype of mammismo—the overbearing mother figure who spoils her children, particularly sons, and in return demands their unquestioning devotion. The chapter considers both the origins of the stereotype and its role in present-day Italy as well as offering some reflections on the study of stereotypes.
Translations from Italian source material are the authors’ own.
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Notes
- 1.
On Catholic views of motherhood and the maternal role since the late nineteenth century see, for example, Koch, “La madre di famiglia nell’esperienza cattolica.”
- 2.
Anna Bravo, “Madri fra oppressione ed emancipazione,” p. 78. (This chapter was first published as “La nuova Italia: Madri fra oppressione ed emancipazione,” in Storia della maternità, edited by Marina d’Amelia.)
- 3.
The term “the golden cage of Italian youth” comes from Dalla Zuanna, “The Banquet of Aeolus,” p. 144.
- 4.
This term is often associated with Padoa-Schioppa although he was not, in fact, the first to use it. As Silvana Patriarca notes in her chapter in this volume, the term bamboccione was used by the novelist Ennio Flaiano as early as 1951.
- 5.
As Luca Storti, Joselle Dagnes, and Javier González Díez have argued, this leads to “stereotyped views of the situation, which are based on little empirical evidence and are inadequate for understanding the country’s problems” Storti et al., “Undisciplined, selfish big babies?” p. 51.
- 6.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/20/italys-mamma-boys-cant-cut-ties. Interestingly, the reference to the stereotype only featured in the title: the article itself was a more serious one about how a man had been forced for financial reasons to return to live with his parents at the age of 36 and the difficulties he experienced in this situation. There continues to be an appetite for journalism on this subject, as witnessed by the episode of ITV’s foreign current affairs programme On Assignment, “Italy’s Mamma’s Boys: The Curse of the Mammoni” (first aired 26 January 2016), which was partly inspired by the research being carried out for this project and for which Morris was an expert adviser.
- 7.
De Rosa, “Il tuo lui è un mammone?” Numerous similar examples of various kinds can be found on Italian websites such as: http://27esimaora.corriere.it/articolo/il-potere-delle-mamme-sui-figli-maschi-adulti/. Another good example is the book by Blini, Mamma mia!, a wacky and wide-ranging comic look at the stereotype and its supposed impact on modern Italian society.
- 8.
Typical of this is, for example, Anon., “‘Bamboccioni’: Italia terza in classifica,” p. 4. Italy’s third place (mentioned in the title), the paper reported, resulted from the fact that, among European countries, both Slovakia and Croatia had more stay-at-home young adults (aged 18–34) than Italy. The Italian percentage reported was, nevertheless, a striking 65.8 per cent.
- 9.
- 10.
On the Jewish mother, see Antler, You Never Call! You Never Write! This stereotype emerged after the Second World War (p. 8) at roughly the same time as the Italian one.
- 11.
Directed, written by, and starring Gianni di Gregorio. Released in English as The Salt of Life.
- 12.
Leone, Confessioni di un mammone italiano.
- 13.
Culicchia, Ameni Inganni. In this novel, it is Alberto who, driven by an almost pathological fear of relationships and commitment, chooses this lifestyle of eternal adolescence: indeed his mother encourages him to lead a more normal life. For a discussion of this work see Masenga, “The ‘Delaying of Age’ Novel” pp. 176–92. Masenga does argue, however, that in most of the “delaying of age” novels she has studied the protagonists identify mainly with their peers and there is “a strong opposition to familial and, more generally, adult figures, who are blamed for complying with the social system and, indeed, symbolizing it. The prolonged youth—or the delaying in defining themselves as adults—does not necessarily correspond to a desire to stay within the family of origin; on the contrary, it develops as a form of reaction to mammismo” (p. 82).
- 14.
Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow, p. 4.
- 15.
For a discussion of how the dominant models of masculinity in Italy have changed over the course of the twentieth century up to the present day, see Sandro Bellassai, L’invenzione della virilità. Bellassai argues that the main motors of change have been feminism and the advent of the consumer society.
- 16.
O’Rawe, Stars and Masculinities, p. 11. See also O’Rawe’s discussion of the “crisis discourse” on pp. 4–5 and Sergio Rigoletto’s criticism of “the binary logic underlying the way in which the axiom of masculinity in crisis in Italian cinema is predominantly framed,” which “sets a normative male ideal in relation to which cinematic representations of men are to be measured” (Masculinity and Italian Cinema, p. 6). Bellassai, too, in the final chapter of L’invenzione della virilità, depicts the end of the century as a period of crisis for masculinity. None of these works, however, directly consider the figure of the bamboccione.
- 17.
Reich, Beyond the Latin Lover, p. xii. Natalie Fullwood has explored the idea of male failure in the films of the period more broadly in Cinema, Gender and Everyday Space. Neither Reich nor Fullwood, however, addresses the mother–son relationship when discussing masculinity.
- 18.
Lippmann. Public Opinion. On stereotypes, their uses and misuses, and for some reflections on Lippmann’s ideas, see Dyer, “The Role of Stereotypes.”
- 19.
Lippmann, Public Opinion, pp. 90–91.
- 20.
Lippmann, Public Opinion, p. 90.
- 21.
For a discussion of how psychologists have discussed stereotypes see Glăveanu, “Stereotypes Revised.”
- 22.
Patriarca, Italian Vices.
- 23.
For the last twenty years the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (MIRCI), along with the Journal of the Motherhood Initiative, has been an important focus for a wide range of research on motherhood. See http://motherhoodinitiative.org/
- 24.
Much has been written about this. See, for example, Sambuco, “Corporeal Bonds”; Benedetti, The Tigress in the Snow; Lazzari and Charnley (eds), To Be or Not to Be a Mother.
- 25.
A pioneering work on the history of motherhood in Italy was d’Amelia (ed.), Storia della maternità. See also Fiume (ed.), Madri. Storia di un ruolo sociale (mostly about the early modern period).
- 26.
See, for example, Filippini, Generare, partorire, nascere.
- 27.
As Ann Taylor Allen wrote in 2002 (comments that are, arguably, still largely true today): “Despite the central importance of this theme [motherhood] to the history of women and of feminism, it has often been neglected by historians, who are usually most interested in women’s entry into new areas such as politics, the professions, sports, and social life outside the family. Motherhood, many imply, was a ‘traditional’ role…” (Allen, Feminism and Motherhood, p. 2.)
- 28.
As mentioned above, one of the more developed areas is that of masculinity and film.
- 29.
D’Amelia, La mamma.
- 30.
On “invented traditions,” see Hobsbawm and Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition.
- 31.
D’Amelia, La mamma, p. 15.
- 32.
Alvaro, “Il mammismo,” p. 184. Alvaro (1895–1956) was a southerner (born in San Luca in Reggio Calabria) from a modest background (his father was a primary school teacher). In addition to his work as a newspaper journalist (mainly in the periods before and after Fascism, given his anti-fascist politics) he wrote numerous novels and non-fiction works as well as a few plays. On his life and work see, for example, Virdia, “Alvaro, Corrado.”
- 33.
Alvaro, “Il mammismo,” p. 187.
- 34.
Bravo, “Madri fra oppressione ed emancipazione,” pp. 77–78.
- 35.
For a discussion of this work (Fabio Cusin, L’Italiano: Realtà e illusioni. Rome: Atlantica Editrice, 1945) see Patriarca, Italian Vices, pp. 204–07 and her chapter in this volume.
- 36.
Household structure and land tenure systems were, of course, extremely varied in Italy. Patrilocality was particularly prevalent in households that were “appoderati” (where the peasants lived on the land they tilled, like sharecroppers). On the structure of peasant families see, for example, Barbagli, Sotto lo stesso tetto; Manoukian, “La famiglia dei contadini.”
- 37.
Cavigioli, Women of a Certain Age, p. 40.
- 38.
Patriarca, Italian Vices, p. 9. Much has been written on representations of southern Italy, both on the “orientalist gaze” of northern Italians towards it and on foreign views. See, for example, Schneider (ed.), Italy’s Southern Question; Moe, The View from Vesuvius. On foreign travellers or residents who wrote about the South see, for example, Ouditt, Impressions of Southern Italy; Alù, Beyond the Traveller’s Gaze.
- 39.
Bravo, “Madri fra oppressione ed emancipazione,” p. 114.
- 40.
D’Agostino, “Forever Mamma’s Boy,” p. 28.
- 41.
See also, Morris, “From Private to Public.”
- 42.
In a recent book, for example, Gabriella Gribaudi recounts how one group of Italian soldiers returning home after the defeat in Greece, on sighting the Italian coast, greeted it with the song “Mamma, Mamma son tanto felice perche ritorno da te” (“Mamma, I’m so happy that I’m coming back to you”; Gribaudi, Combattenti sbandati prigionieri, p. 109).
- 43.
On this point see Bravo, “Simboli del materno.” On how women’s role in the Resistance has been remembered and commemorated more broadly see Perry Willson, “Saints and Heroines.”
- 44.
On the latter point, see also Bracke, Women and the Reinvention of the Political.
- 45.
See also Glynn, Women, Terrorism and Trauma.
- 46.
Updated versions of the contributions to the Edinburgh workshop (apart from Maddelena Tirabassi’s paper) have been published as a “forum” article: Barocci et al., “Mothers and Mammismo in the Italian Diaspora.” A fuller version of Adalgisa Giorgio’s paper has appeared as Giorgio, “The Italian family, motherhood and Italianness in New Zealand.”
- 47.
Mary Contini is the director of what is arguably Scotland’s best-known Italian delicatessen as well as a chef/restaurateur. Her numerous publications include two autobiographical cookbooks, addressed to her elder and younger daughters respectively, Dear Francesca and Dear Olivia.
- 48.
There are now vast numbers of so-called “Mummy blogs.” For a substantial bibliography and discussion of the way that mothers, as readers of blogs, use the “mammasphere” as a cultural site through which the identities and role of motherhood, and the mother–child relationship, are socially and digitally (re)constructed, see Orton-Johnson, “Mummy Blogs.” Another increasingly common format is the maternal memoir. For a study of recent Italian memoirs, see Marina Bettaglio, “Maternal Momoirs.”
- 49.
See d’Amelia’s comments on mothers, blogs and stereotypes in “Cambia il mestiere,” also reported in Giovanna Pezzuoli, “La ribellione delle blogger.”
- 50.
Valentini is a well-known journalist who has written a great deal on issues related to women. One of her recent publications—O i figli o il lavoro—focuses particularly on questions relevant to this debate. See also Adalgisa Giorgio, “Motherhood and Work in Italy.”
- 51.
On the mother-in-law joke see Davies, “The English Mother-in-Law Joke.” Davies, a sociologist, uses comparative data to argue that mother-in-law jokes are typical of societies where nuclear families are prevalent and they do not occur in patrilineal societies. She sees the mother-in-law joke as a means of creating distance to diffuse family situations, produced, she argues, by “a particular tension within the social ordering of kinship in nuclear families. The anomaly is the intrusion of the wife’s mother into the life of a family supposed to be limited to husband, wife and dependent children” (p. 35). While this argument about the origins of the joke is a persuasive one, her conclusion that misogyny has nothing to do with it is less convincing.
- 52.
“Il mammo” was, for example, the title of a sitcom about a male single parent, broadcast on the Italian television channel Canale 5 for three seasons (2004–7). See O’Rawe, Stars and Masculinities, for an interesting discussion of the figure of the mammo and the role of “new fathers” (or padri materni) in post-2000 Italian cinema (pp. 78–82). As she notes, there has been considerable sociological and media interest in the subject in recent years.
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Morris, P., Willson, P. (2018). La Mamma: Italian Mothers Past and Present. In: Morris, P., Willson, P. (eds) La Mamma. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54256-4_1
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