Measuring the Family: The Independent Global Index on Family

• Post by: Nicole M. King
• September 9, 2016

Independent Global Index on Family: Report 2016 on the Right of Family in the World Luca Volontè, Francesca Maccioni, Giovanna Rossi, Maria Letizia Bosoni, and Vera LomazziNovae Terrae Foundation and the Family Studies and Research University Centre of the Catholic University of Milan, July 2016 Where in the world is the best place to raise a family? Which countries best support family health and growth with a diverse array of childcare and family leave policies? Where can parents most easily find flexible employment? Where is divorce uncommon, fertility robust, and intergenerational ties healthy? The Novae Terrae Foundation, in cooperation with the Catholic University of Milan, has recently published a large and comprehensive review of the family worldwide in an attempt to answer some of these questions. The Independent Global Index on Family (IGIF), published earlier this year, “aims at providing a synthetic measure of how the family, particularly with children, is supported in different countries over the world, being aware of marked cultural differences.”   The researchers begin by explaining just what they mean in the term “family”: On the one hand, the desire to find the family underlying many forms of living together denotes an unequivocal impulse to “make a family,” on the part of both the individual and society; on the other, the difficulty in acknowledging the family shows that the foundations of the family relationship, their essential nature, have weakened to the point of almost disappearing. . . . The thesis of pluralization, which prevails in the Western today world [sic], forces us—in a sense: to make the idea of family a problem, to ask ourselves about the meaning of a relationship that until a few decades ago was taken for granted.  There is real truth here. It is well noted that the term “family” is hotly contested today precisely because it lies in human nature to form families, even if the dark side