ABSTRACT
The word family to a native of the United Kingdom conjures up in all probability the notion of a household consisting of a husband and wife and their young or teenage children. It would be tendentious to describe this as an average family, but it is the norm from which divergences, such as single persons, one-parent families and childless couples, are measured. Article 29 of the Italian Constitution presents the concept of the family in Italian law as being a natural association founded upon matrimony. The word natural carries for the civil lawyer an unmistakeable echo of the definition of natural law given at the beginning of Justinian's Institutes. In Italy, as in England and Wales, marriage ceremonies are of two kinds civil and ecclesiastical. The ecclesiastical ceremony in Italy is that the Roman Catholic Church, which is not an established Church like the Church of England.
