CIt’s an Italy that lives in an unstable balance between precariousness and the desire to keep the pieces together. It’s the one told by CISF Family Report 2025with an eloquent title The fragile tomorrow. The family put to the test of contemporaneitypublished by Edizioni San Paolo. The International Family Studies Center, in collaboration with Eumetra, analyzed a sample of 1,600 Italian families to understand how our homes, our relationships and, above all, our psychological well-being are really doing. The result? A complex and profoundly human portrait of a country in trouble, in which six out of ten Italians say they suffer from anxiety or stress.
Families under pressure
The main sources of concern remain health (45.2%), economic difficulties (34.7%) And work (32.2%).
And the psychological crisis is accompanied by the economic one: in 2024, the 32.5% of families have given up spending on personal well-beingThe 32.4% for the homeand the 18.5% for health.
«The fragile tomorrow is not just an individual issue – explains the CISF director, Francesco Belletti – but it concerns the quality of life, social cohesion and well-being of the entire community.” A thought that resonates in many Italian homes, where vulnerability has become part of everyday life, together with… struggling to balance work, care and personal life.
A scary future (but not in the family)
57% of Italians look at the country’s future with pessimism (“it will get worse”), but when it comes to their family, the perception changes: 56.7% expect stability.
It is as if, in the face of global uncertainty, the family remains the last refuge, the only place where the sense of trust resists.
Young people and loneliness
For young Italian adults, freedom remains a distant goal: 74.1% of those still live with their parents is in a medium-low economic condition.
Those who have managed to gain independence, however, face another challenge: loneliness. Eating alone, living alone, feeling alone – a condition which, according to the report, represents a real factor of emotional vulnerability.
Sandwich parents
And then there’s the “sandwich generation”made up of adults who care for both children and elderly parents: 42.6% of families with children also takes care of non-self-sufficient relatives.
Of these, over half (53%) reports feeling overwhelmed more often by caregiving tasks than parenting tasks.
Fewer children, more pets
In the new emotional balance, the pet acquires an increasingly central role.
Today 59.8% of Italian families have at least one peta percentage that rises to 71% among couples with children and 74.9% in single-parent households.
A clear sign: the animal has become an integral part of family life, often as a response to the need for bonding and presence.
Thus was born the phenomenon of “dog parenting”where the dog – or cat – almost becomes an “emotional child”.
The family is now digital
Technology has entered the domestic dynamics by right. In families with minor children, 55.4% report conflicts related to cell phone use. And the tension doesn’t just concern the kids: in 30.5% of cases it also involves the couple.
At the same time, the home is increasingly digital: 58.4% of families use ChatGPT daily, both for informing children and for school purposes.
A fact that tells not only the technological evolution, but also a new form of coexistence between parents, children and artificial intelligences.
Parents between “tamers” and “free rangers”
The report identifies four broad categories of Italian parents:
Tamers (36.7%)rigid but present;
Unarmed (24.4%)often insecure and overwhelmed;
Companions (15.7%)capable of listening and guiding;
Free hitters (23.2%)more independent and permissive.
A fragile tomorrow, but not without hope
From the CISF framework emerges a family which, although tried, remains a social bulwark.
It is the place where you learn to cope with fatigue, to reinvent yourself and seek new forms of well-being.
In an Italy that is ageing, digitizing and isolating, the challenge of the future will be precisely this: protect relationshipsdefend mental health and transform fragility into a collective resource.
As the report writes, “the fragile tomorrow is not a destiny, but a condition to be lived with awareness and care”.
A map that reflects the attempt – and the effort – to find an educational balance in a time where everything changes quickly, from family roles to technologies.