I'm Going to Italy! Now What?

I don't think I can adequately put into words how excited I am to travel to Italy and to be immersed in the culture--to experience life as an Italian does. I'm currently enrolled in an accelerated Italian class and am already realizing that this trip will be amazing, but not without challenges--my mastery of the language being the first. I have spent the last four years studying psychology and am excited to enter into a Marriage and Family Therapy program in the fall. The structure and function of the family unit intrigues me and I cannot wait to learn more about the Italian family.

When I first began working on my proposal for my field study, I wanted to learn more about premarital perceptions and how those affect marriage outcomes. I have always wanted to go to Italy and when I looked further into research on marriage in Italy, I was blown away by how low their cohabitation and divorce rates were. I wanted to know what about their marriages were different than marriages in the United States that made them more successful (in terms of longevity). Having taking classes of marriage, I knew that misperceptions about marriage can often lead to problems and difficulty in marriage; I decided to research what perceptions about marriage young adults in Italy had and if they were more accurate than their American cohort. I believe that these perceptions may be a factor in marriage success.

However I have also realized that while I want to see if there is any correlation concerning marriage perceptions, I would be missing out on so much of the culture about Italian Marriage if I made my research only about the young adult individuals, and not about the Italian family. I want to see if Italians have an accurate perception of marriage during their single years, but to know that--I must first have an accurate perception of the Italian marriage, and how that fits into the Italian family, the Italian community, and the Italian  culture. Luckily for me, I have over 3 months to mold my research into a project and to become capable of asking the right questions. I've heard that if you don't ask the right questions, you won't get the right answers.


My New Goal: Find the RIGHT questions!