ITALIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION

Nowadays there is a great debate surrounding the family and what qualifies it as such: ‘what is’ and ‘what makes the family’. If it seems widely recognized that the family is a common good, on the other hand everyone interprets the family and the common good in his/her own way. It is in no way clear how the different types of family represent a common good for their own members or the community. The thesis of this paper is that the tendencies towards radical changes of the family are due to processes of societal morphogenesis which require careful analysis and evaluation. The sociocultural morphogenesis of the family can have many meanings and developments. It is necessary to understand if and where the family (re)generates itself in those primary social networks that escape the processes of chaotic morphogenesis thanks to the vitality of the family’s own social genome. This genome is what makes the family the source of personal and social virtues, that is, the primary relational common good on which the happiness of individuals depends. It is a question of discovering if and how the germ of a new family life can be born that humanizes people rather than abandoning them to commodification and estrangement.