10895 myth of child friendly Italy!

And your point is, exactly?

What do you mean, what's my point? I'm just saying it's bad that big supermarket chains don't provide the trolleys with baby seats in so mums can take their babies to the supermarket. What wasn't clear about my post?

Moved to [url=http://www.italiauncovered.co.uk]Italia Uncovered[/url]

Having never in my life seen a supermarket trolley with 'a baby seat' (not in the UK or Italy, but maybe I've been too long out of the UK) I must confess to finding your query a tad bizzarre.

How long is this going to affect you? I believe most children sub 6 months can be happily carted about in a sling, and as soon as they are a year old they can perch on the normal fold down shelf in the trolley. Am I wrong? Is your child abnormally heavy? Or is there a conspiracy against nine month old infants? We should be told. What is the Italian radio equivalent of You and Yours?

Moved to [url=http://www.italiauncovered.co.uk]Italia Uncovered[/url]

Charles, perhaps you not recalling ever seeing a supermarket trolley with a baby seat is due to you never having needed one? Or maybe your experience is further anecdotal evidence supporting Katier's complaint?

It's all very well saying that small children under 6 months can carried in a sling and ones of a year old or so can sit in the standard seat, but I imagine most people would find it a bit difficult to not go shopping for six months while the resident small person grows up.

Katier and JulianColl are right: supermarkets here do not have many trolleys with infant seats. I think many – perhaps most – have none at all. In fact, there are so few about that I'd never noticed them and so was a bit surprised when my partner mentioned the other day that she thought she'd seen a couple at the supermarket we were visiting and suggested we might look for one instead of doing what we have done over the last seven months: have one of us driving the pushchair and the other the trolley. That's not a problem for us since there are always two of us, but I'm sure there are single parents here who must find shopping a bit of a challenge since not everyone has the advantage of the archetypal Italian extended family with numerous babysitters on call.

As for what's to be done about it, I suspect the possibility of positive action is about as great as the likelihood of one getting a prompt and sympathetic response to a complaint made to Telecom Italia.

Al

Well okay Allan, but can't you just buy a child armchair (or use the one designed for use in the car?) to fit into the supermarket trolley? Is this perhaps 'the better mousetrap' which you could offer to this rather small market!

Not sure the lack of baby seats in supermarket trolleys is hard evidence of child-unfriendliness. Sorry to sound like an old f**t, but we didn't have such things when my kids were babies (there were supermarkets though...), and it wasn't really such a big deal. Actually, the baby buggy was a good alternative to the shopping trolley

[quote=juliancoll;102090]I'm sure most Italian Mums leave very young children with Nonna or drag Nonna/Zia/Dad along to help out if they can - although this is often only the 'modern Italian man' who does this.

Family friendly often stops at the front door. Customer service (as you have discovered) can be poor. Invest in a trusted neighbour/friend to watch the baby while you pop to the shops for half an hour (which also gives you a break and a chance to buy that must have little black dress you've been hankering over). :smile:[/quote]

Leaving pre-school age children with Nonna is definitely the norm here though we see a growing number of "modern Italian man", we comment on it regularly. Even saw one changing a nappy a few months back. Good idea though to consider leaving baby with trusted neighbour/friend. Without exception, all my Italian lady neighbours of "Nonna age" would be thrilled to bits to have another bambino to coo over whilst mum was out shopping. They are astonishingly good with children, aren't they?

[quote=Charles Phillips;102112]Well okay Allan, but can't you just buy a child armchair (or use the one designed for use in the car?) to fit into the supermarket trolley? Is this perhaps 'the better mousetrap' which you could offer to this rather small market![/quote]
When we were investigating car seats, pushchairs and so on, we did come across one car seat that had slots in the bottom which were supposed to allow you to rest it on a normal supermarket trolley. Unfortunately, the car seat we chose because of it's particularly good safety rating by test organisations did not have this facility.

Until you go into a big shop selling stuff for babies, you really have no idea of how many manufacturers and models there are of car seats, pushchairs, and integrated systems that allow you to move baby attached to seat from car to pushchair. As is the norm, there are no standards, so you can't just buy the car seat you like best, the pushchair frame you like best and expect to be able to use the two together.

It may not be huge, but I think there is a market for some sort of device which would allow one to attach a car seat to a supermarket trolley. Since it would make a particular aspect of life a bit easier, we would buy one in a shot if the price was reasonable. I suspect the major design challenges would be sorting out a way to make sure the adaptor is compatible with as many different car seats as possible, keeping it compact since there's already plenty of baby paraphernalia to be hauled around and keeping the price down since it's hardly a vital piece of equipment.

Al

While I'm glad that some people can see my point (Juliancoll, Allanmason - thank you!!), I'm a bit disturbed that to others my grievance is clearly trivial and short-term.
Luckily my husband is one of the modern Italian fathers and comes with me whenever he can but he, or Nonna or whoever else is not always available, but food shopping is a necessity.
Charles Phillips - my child is not "abnormally" heavy but is quite a weight to lug about in a sling while shopping, and this is not the point anyway.
I can't be bothered to argue my point really bu thanks to those who understood!

And your point is, exactly?

Katier, don't worry about Nardini. He appears to be only interested in art,food,culture,wine & possibly dialectic eclectisism. The ordinary & everyday trials of life of lesser mortals trying to muddle through here in Italy are, it would appear possibly, way too beneath him. Considering we can't afford his advice, why is he volunteering to respond to such a mundane thread?
Bunch

[quote=annec;102116]Not sure the lack of baby seats in supermarket trolleys is hard evidence of child-unfriendliness. Sorry to sound like an old f**t, but we didn't have such things when my kids were babies (there were supermarkets though...), and it wasn't really such a big deal. Actually, the baby buggy was a good alternative to the shopping trolley[/quote]

and have to say annec when we were kids my mum could quite happily and safely leave us outside the supermarket in the pram whilst she did the shopping not so now.

Could the lack of baby trolleys, have something to do with Italian grand parents, I see lots of extended familys out shopping, .........many hands make light work as they say

Thanks Bunch - I must say I did think "why bother responding to a thread that holds no interest for you?"!

(Maybe he was feeling a wee bit lonely??? And let's face it. The Arts seems a minority interest here.)

When our kids were babies and and if one of us only was taking them to the supermarket we generally put them in the "Rock-a-tot" type car seat. The one that we had was small enough to fit into the actual body of the trolley. It did reduce the amount of things you could buy but solved the carrying problem.

Also apart from slings you can buy backback-type seats for babies that are more robust and more comfortable than a sling.

Otherwise I'm afraid you're back to doing the "big" weekily shop on your own and leaving smallie with Dad or forcing him to come along with you as baby carrier.

Also one final thought/idea for any engineers/designers out there.

It always seemed to me that rather than having an attachment for the top of the trolley that would have to fit too many different types of seat why not have a fitting that could attach a buggy to the front of the trolley so that you could push the trolley and the buggy at the same time. Most buggies are of uniform size and some sort of universal attachment should be possible or maybe even the Maclarens of this world could produce one for their own type of buggy.

Anybody want to engineer a prototype?

The trouble with attaching a buggy on the front is that it makes the whole thing rather long and unwieldy - very difficult to get around corners of narrow isles or around pallets of good waiting to be unpacked. Even when I had a tandem buggy I found this ran a lot of people over going round a corner.

I used to have to push the trolley and pull the buggy behind me. I would then get an assistant to push the trolley to the car - always used Waitrose for this as they were the most obliging - and I suspect they were glad to get me out of the store!

Hi Katier
Just want to say that I totally agree with you (and also can't understand people who can be bothered to reply to threads that are apparently of no interest to them). Having a 2 year old we have now progressed to the proper trolley seats although keeping him in one is a whole other problem! I used to just put his car seat inside the trolley but this wasn't ideal cos a) I could hardly get anything in the trolley and b) he often had packets of weetabix and suchlike falling on top of him. I also tried the sling but again I agree, carrying him about is pretty heavy and not to mention it's hard to bend over and get things off bottom shelves. I also didn't have anyone to leave him with and no matter how nice and friendly my local "nonna" like neighbour was I'm afraid I just wouldn't be leaving my 6 month old baby with her. I always say that Italy is child friendly because they're friendly to children but things like babychanging, baby seats in trolleys etc are hard to come by. And don't get me started on trying to manouevre the buggy around everyone who parks on pavements, when there actually are pavements to start with!

Katier, I do understand your problem although my "babies" are fully grown up now, but it is true that sometimes you have to do things on your own such as shopping and that you do need all the help you can get. Supermarkets should understand that. Perhaps it may be an idea, particularly if you are a regular shopper, to address a short letter to the management pointing out the difficulties encountered. Maybe they never thought of it.....

Gala Placidia - I did think of writing a letter but then decided that it wouldn't get me anywhere (bad attitude I know!)
Nicola- baby facilities are extremely poor for such a child loving nation. I've tried putting the car seat in the trolley on occasions but can hardly buy anything and sort of defeats the whole object of going to the supermarket! And I agree, as super helpful as my mother in law is, I don't always want to leave my baby! And the pavement/road situation is a joke! We recently bought a maclaren buggy just so it would be nippier for the town but it's still difficult - our pavements all seem to have lamp posts or trees right in the middle of them, with foot-high kerbs and whenever there is a slope from pavement to road you can bet there's a car parked across it!!!

Hi

I have a 10 month old and completely agree with you. One of the things that I used to do in our local Esselunga (only has one one baby trolley) was go at about midday / one o'clock. As EVERY self respecting mama and nonnna would have their little darlings home for their pranzo.

Oh and i use the disabled parking spaces. "Come and have a go if you think you hard enough" is my personal mantra!!

As for the rest of this thread, some of us are , as well as restoring houses, coping with beauracy, trying to understand what is going on, ALSO are raising small children in a foreign country. So please a little tolerance goes a long way.

you have my total support

oh and Carrefour in Lucca have about 20 gizmo wacky baby trolleys at €2 a go!!

Welcome to the world of motherhood. Basically you're invisible from now on. Doesn't matter what country you're in. And all that's left to look forward to is turning into an old crone. Now where's my knitting ......

z.adjey - thanks for the support!!! It's not easy - good for you with the disabled spaces, if only they had them in our ipercoop!! I'm glad your carrefour has the trolleys - at mine they obviously thought I was deranged.

Hello Katier,
I completely agree with you that there is a lack of suitable baby chair trolleys. Having 3 children the youngest now being 2 I know what it's like. For me even being a large man carrying my daughter in my arms for anymore than 10 minutes starts to get tiring.
I think many others have said the right thing that most italians don't take their children or babies to supermarkets. Therefore the supermarkets don't supply the right trolleys.
I must say that where I live I have seen the type of trolley that you would use. Funny thing though most of them have children far older in them then they should.
Same can be said when I walk around town I see many 4 or 5 yr old children being pushed around in prams, must be an Italian thing!
I would say that for me I found it easier to go to smaller local shops where there were always a plenty supply of trolleys. In fact far more trolleys than customers usually...

I think if you have babies and have had this facility previuosly in uk, it will be hard to try and live without it in Italy, so can understand, I had 2 in 18months so always wanted one of the double seat trolleys, had many a rant in the carpark!
Italians don't seem to be producing like they used to and their shopping habits are different to our, we like to go once a week and fill a trolley till you can't get anymore in and they like to go every day with a basket for a few items, so maybe thats why the trolley is not widely available here-not enough babies and different shopping habit.
Got an idea for you, if you are currently only shopping when hubby is available instead of taking him and baby with you, leave baby with him at home.
Escape by yourself even if it's just to the supermarket its brill to be alone and not have to rush round. think of a really nice (quick and easy meal) buy a nice bottle of wine and when babies in bed have a nice time together.
Next time you want to escape hubby will be happy to let you as he will be rewarded, trust me it works!

herealready - that is a good idea! But, sad as it sounds, hubby and I like going to do the shopping together when he's free! This is my first baby and he was born here but I'm just used to the facilities in the UK through my sister and friends and their babies. If I had used them myself it would be even more difficult to adjust I'm sure. You're right about the shopping habits though - they do tend to shop like that, but if that's the case why does the Ipercoop exist?!

Il cacciatore - I've noticed that too about children who look too old for their pushchairs!

On a more positive note about being child friendly, I've found a wonderful mother/baby swimming course here in Lecce. Pretty avant-garde for here, and the other pools in town obviously thought it was something totally weird when I asked about it. My son and I are both loving it!

Katier

The mother baby swimming is second to none in this country. We did it last term and have come back for more. Our instructor is a 20 something male, which you would not get in the UK and is like a baby whisperer. There is some really good swimming training and I was told today this is where their olypians start!! My son LOVES it.

It is also a way to meet other mothers as mother baby groups are a bit thin on the ground.

z

So my question is how does one link "myth of child friendly Italy" to a problem concerning lack of trolleys or lack of appropriate trolleys for carrying infants?

The topic heading attracted me too, to this thread, but the contents of the original post,clearly does not have any resemblance to the topic heading.indeed a better topic heading would have been "shortage of child friendly trolleys in Italy!" rather than the over dramatical title which one would suppose, would be behind some new scientific data, or recent poll of bla bla bla.

Interestingly the cost cutters, the tesco express store and the local sommerfield,as of this afternoon did not have any child friendly trolleys either.

So maybe as the UK leads the way on such things, I should maybe also be over dramatic and start a thread about infant abuse by British supermarkets, which surely would be as ridiculous and unfounded as the topic heading here.

PS. I do sympathies never the less concerning struggling to do the shopping with infants.

Next time you go shopping how about taking the child in a buggy and having a large rucksack on your back and putting shopping into that.I'm sure within minutes you'd be asked to explain your behavior then you can point out to the manager that as they don't provide child friendly trollies this is your only option!!

well Giovanni I'm so terribly sorry to have been over dramatic. Next time I will think long and hard about what to call my thread. Gosh, slap on the wrist for me.
The reason for this thread title was the fact (not hard to work it out really) that everyone raves about Italy being such a family-oriented country, love kids etc etc, and yet when it comes to it, child-friendly facilities are thin on the ground compared to, say, the UK.

Yours seemed a very reasonable post Katier, and I would have thought a useful and helpful comment to make and of interest to mothers out here with young children.I am surprised and sorry at the response >Usually helpful and supportive some of the forum seems to have taken exception to it, not usually the case. Please dont let this put you off from posting again. We dont have young children, but it is an insight nevertheless into the difficulties to be dealt with and just as valuable as other posts on this forum.
A

Nardini, Charles and Giovanni, so glad to see the great British tolerance of children is alive and well here.

I think the problem here is little more than asking ourselves "who" in Italy spoils/ruins this myth of a child friendly supermarket environment. IMHO the blame should be placed firmly at the door of the supermarket chains themselves and [U]not[/U] thrown back in the face of the original poster. The point made was valid... if you HAVE to have your kids with you then the question of their safety must be paramount when in such places.

In the British culture the Italian style 'granparent' syndrome is [I]not[/I] prevalent, and hasn't been as long as I can remember. Therefore to attract the widest possible consumer base the British outlets will provide child/parent parking, children friendly trollies and whatever else they can think of to increase sales. But Italy [I]does[/I] have a system whereby the grandparents, [U]or[/U] asilo's [U]or[/U] asilo nido's have care of most children for most of the time when parents need to be working, shopping etc. Hence the lack of many younger children in such shops here, and - dare I suggest - hence the lack of thought on the need to provide suitable trollies or parking to cater for such a customer base.

I know one supermarket on the SS494 via Nuovo Vigevanese, Corsico, Milano (part of the Esselunga chain), that provides a nice play area for 'tinies' which is manned by qualified childrens nursery teachers. The facility is free and children must be signed 'in' and 'out' (obviously). Now during the week it is hardly used at all when '[I]gli nonni[/I]' have the kids - but come the weekend, when Mama e Papa take their kiddiwinks shopping, it is packed...Maybe their other branches provide the same facility. I'm not sure.

We live near a very big, normally excellent supermarket Esselunga and now I come to think of it there are very very few trolleys with baby/toddler seats. It seems to me that Italians dont bring their children shopping nearly as often as UK customers. Whatever time of day/week there are fewer children than would be at the same time in UK supermarket.

I would also add that there are also very very few if any trolleys for disabled customers. I think that an earlier poster was correct when he/she stated that children/babies and the disabled stay at home, either by choice or institutional neglect for any with a 'special need'.

Carol, we have the same play facility here at the Arezzo Esselunga, a large space well furnished and staffed but only really used at the weekend so I guess that children here also have other carers during the week .

Angie & Robert In this case I wasnt being at all sarcastic and my suggestion was to focus the minds of supermarket managers on the problem as somtimes it seems the only way!

Obviously some misunderstanding as can happen so apologies if I offended poster of thread!

[quote=katier;102240]z.adjey - thanks for the support!!! It's not easy - good for you with the disabled spaces, if only they had them in our ipercoop!!
[/quote]
Would just like to point out that having a child does not give you the right to park in these spaces- there is nothing wrong with your ability to walk and as someone with a disbled father who DOES find it extremely difficult to walk any distance I am sitting here with my blood boiling. Go on everyone- have a go at me,but 2 wrongs do not make a right- i.e because there are no mother and baby spaces does not make parking in a disabled space something to be applauded

Further to what Aretina says, there is also a space dedicated to entertain children at the Esselunga supermarket at San Concordio (LU), which is mainly used on weekends. On the other hand, no facilities at the Esselunga Ponte a Moriano (LU) one.... only a few miles away. And I have seen very few babies around.
I must add that I have seen plenty of mothers with babies at the fresh market in Bagni di Lucca on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but they shop very lightly, just a few things. It looks as if it is more of an outing.

Angie and Robert, thank you very much. To be honest I've been pretty surprised and disappointed by some of the responses to my original post - I certainly didn't think it would cause so much bad feeling. I think the problem is that some people have difficulty in accepting that the bel paese isn't perfect after all...

[quote=HelenMW;102563]Would just like to point out that having a child does not give you the right to park in these spaces- there is nothing wrong with your ability to walk and as someone with a disbled father who DOES find it extremely difficult to walk any distance I am sitting here with my blood boiling. Go on everyone- have a go at me,but 2 wrongs do not make a right- i.e because there are no mother and baby spaces does not make parking in a disabled space something to be applauded[/quote]

Regardless of this, you're still likely to get a multa if you do this and good luck contesting it! :eeeek:

It's true there are far fewer facilities for babies provided in Italy but I still think it's very baby/child-friendly - in the sense that children and babies are welcome everywhere, even in the poshest, snootiest restaurants. Watching some "baby story" type programmes on Sky it struck me how often I heard mums saying they wanted to stop breastfeeding because "they can't go anywhere", go out to restaurants with their husbands etc, and wanted them on the bottle so they could leave them with someone else and get a bit of a life back. Having brought up my son here and about to start with my second, I can honestly say I did not cut back on the restaurants one tiny bit, with baby in tow. As well as a party for him, to celebrate his first birthday we went to a [I]very [/I]nice restaurant where he was welcomed with open arms (we kept one of those clip on seats in the car to use when out instead of expecting everyone to provide a high chair for us) and he had his first taste of lobster! In the UK? Can you imagine the tuts and disapproving glares, that's if we were even let in! Hardly anywhere has baby changing facilities either but I always used to nip out to the car in that case. I think I remember a post too where someone was asking about hotels in Italy having/not having bottle warmers, travel cots, baby food heating facilities and even sterilizers! Firstly, I would rather use my own and while I know flight luggage restrictions are tight, tickets are so inexpensive these days that I really don't mind paying the extra to bring my own stuff. When my son was 13 months we spent a month in Thailand "roughing it" and had no problems whatsoever.

So, yes, you are right, there are far fewer "facilities" provided for babies but to be honest it has never bothered me as I just adapted and didn't really "expect" anyone to provide them for me. I enjoyed my daily trips to the shop to get the day's groceries and used the shopping tray under the pram/buggy to store the groceries. Having said that, our local Italmark does have four trolleys with baby seat (the one you are talking about katier) which never seem to be used by anyone (parents seem to look at them curiously and with a bit of suspicion) which I'm sure I'll make the most of, although I'll probably leave the new baby with nonna more often than not :yes:

Helen MW - I would not actually park in the disabled spaces, and I agree that having a baby does not affect your ablity to walk. It would, however, be useful to have parking spaces right near the shop as with rain/cold weather/hot weather/20 bags of shopping, it would make things easier for me and all other mums I expect.

[quote=katier;102573]Angie and Robert, thank you very much. To be honest I've been pretty surprised and disappointed by some of the responses to my original post - I certainly didn't think it would cause so much bad feeling. I think the problem is that some people have difficulty in accepting that the bel paese isn't perfect after all...[/quote]

It's true, some are very defensive about their adopted country, but don't let it bother you. It's true what you say and I remember in the first few years of being in Italy feeling a tremendous need to "vent" about things that were driving me mad (just like I often need to do about my mother - and mother-in-law:winki:) It would be a pity if you thought you couldn't do that here. Of course Italy isn't perfect, any more than the UK is.

[quote=katier;102576]Helen MW - I would not actually park in the disabled spaces, and I agree that having a baby does not affect your ablity to walk. It would, however, be useful to have parking spaces right near the shop as with rain/cold weather/hot weather/20 bags of shopping, it would make things easier for me and all other mums I expect.[/quote]

I was just thinking this the other day, wouldn't it be nice to have family parking spaces? Especially at the moment, heavily pregnant, it's not a disability but it certainly feels like one. :laughs::laughs:

[quote=carmel;102535]Nardini, Charles and Giovanni, so glad to see the great British tolerance of children is alive and well here.[/quote]

Indeed, I can see from your post that you are further down that line than I.
You might want to consider, how on earth,a supermarket not having the right trolleys,is in some way a damnation of a culture!

[quote=z.adjey;102231]Hi

I have a 10 month old and completely agree with you. One of the things that I used to do in our local Esselunga (only has one one baby trolley) was go at about midday / one o'clock. As EVERY self respecting mama and nonnna would have their little darlings home for their pranzo.

[COLOR="Red"]Oh and i use the disabled parking spaces. "Come and have a go if you think you hard enough" is my personal mantra!! [/COLOR]

As for the rest of this thread, some of us are , as well as restoring houses, coping with beauracy, trying to understand what is going on, ALSO are raising small children in a foreign country. So please a little tolerance goes a long way.

[COLOR="Red"][B]you have my total support[/B][/COLOR]

oh and Carrefour in Lucca have about 20 gizmo wacky baby trolleys at €2 a go!![/quote]

While I feel for you with all the difficulties you are facing living here in Italy, and how frustrating it is for you to raise a 10 month old child here (I've 'been there, done that' etc.etc.), I really cannot believe that you made that comment about using disabled parking spaces.... because if you DID, then you don't have my support!

I am disabled, and find shopping to be - at the best of times 'difficult' and often 'impossible'!
Difficult because the parking places rovided for us are only a few.
Impossible because they are frequently taken by [I][U]non[/U][/I] disabled shoppers who CAN walk with ease to the shop but usually are just too damned lazy - and selfish - to do so! But for the disabled the fact that there is a [I]wider space[/I] to allow for wheel chairs, or people with walking sticks who have difficulty getting out of their vehicles etc. they are a [I][U]real[/U][/I] necessity...

Many shops now have a notice next to these bays which says:
"If you take my bay, you can take my handicap too!"
If you would like my disabled parking card I'll be more than willing to swap it for your two good legs and the energy that you clearly have to be able to live your lifestyle... So, how about it - want to swap?

Even though you say [I][U]"Come and have a go if you think you hard enough" is my personal mantra!! [/U][/I] I do hope you will reconsider using these parking bays, as even if I [I]was[/I] so inclined 'I' certainly couldn't "have a go" as my disability precludes such behaviour. But would you [I]really[/I] fight a disabled person if they challenged you for using their parking space? Surely not!

Much better to ask to speak to the store manager, or to write to the head office of any chain and lay out your arguments...I've done that regarding disabled facilities with some considerable success. (Many stores use the disabled toilets as the store for their cleaners mops and buckets - Fewer do so nowadays up here where I live!)

Oh - and isn't the €2 for the 'whacky trolley' returned to you when you put it back?

I'm sorry if I sound a little bitter in this post - it's because I am...

[quote=katier;102511]well Giovanni I'm so terribly sorry to have been over dramatic. Next time I will think long and hard about what to call my thread. Gosh, slap on the wrist for me.
The reason for this thread title was the fact (not hard to work it out really) that everyone raves about Italy being such a family-oriented country, love kids etc etc, and yet when it comes to it, child-friendly facilities are thin on the ground compared to, say, the UK.[/quote]

Yes but you are not now in the UK! that's fundamentally the big difference,and the cultures differ too, yet you would use such a materialistic observation, [lack of child friendly trolley] as proof that Italy is not child friendly and therefore not more family oriented,than say Britain.

Popper cock...Family orientation has absolutely nothing to do with silly trolleys,or larger parking spaces, only a British style mentality could see any type of link!

Child friendly and family oriented , has more to do with the social interaction of the people, the extended family and the close tires that's what it means, not some nonsense concerning shopping trolleys.
Indeed although you never mentioned it,no doubt the crèche facilities are pretty poor too in Italy compared to the UK. Would this be more proof of a not so child friendly Italy?

Or rather the fundamental difference, that actually makes Italy child friendly where kids are not shopped out to institutions at an early age,and more families looking after their own,takes the priority.

Thats the fundamental background to why Italy is deemed more child friendly than some other western societies, nothing to do with shopping trolleys.
[Tkle note camel too.]
Thats the English mentality........and has nothing to do with being protective to ones adopted country what so ever, its more to do with those who should leave their British mentality back home,if one intends to make a new life in Italy.

Having considered the question further, I thought about the percentage of supermarket visits which I make where I see a child. I would say about 1 in 300 (and as has been mentioned before, it is generally on a Saturday, when a small family is shopping together, that there is a child or two in tow).

I recall in the UK seeing squalling brats, sometimes being walloped by their mothers, regularly in supermarkets. This observation leads me to conclude that small children do not enjoy the supermarket experience, the mothers do not enjoy taking them, and the rest of the shoppers positively hate the experience.

It therefore seems to me that Italy is far more civilised and child friendly in this regard.

[quote=giovanni;102584]

Popper cock...Family orientation has absolutely nothing to do with silly trolleys,or larger parking spaces, only a British style mentality could see any type of link!

Thats the English mentality........and has nothing to do with being protective to ones adopted country what so ever, its more to do with those who should leave their British mentality back home,if one intends to make a new life in Italy.[/quote]

Funny, being British I thought I had the right to a "British style mentality".
Also, I didn't come to Italy, like most of you, to make a new life. My husband is Italian and for now has found work here so we live here. I am British, proud of it, and will never leave that mentality behind me, as much as I appreciate many aspects of Italian life and culture.

[quote]Funny, being British I thought I had the right to a "British style mentality".[/quote]

Funny, do not recall mentioning if you had a right or not to a "British mentality" merely pointed it out.
I too have a British mentality, but I am posting this from England.where it is well suited,when I am in Italy I leave my British mentality back there,it makes things so much easier when it comes to adapting.