‘Mammoni’ or ‘bamboccioni’?

‘Mammoni’ or ‘bamboccioni’?

Forty and Still Living La Dolce Vita… at Mamma’s House

Move over, Peter Pan — Italy has its own boys (and girls) who never grow up: the legendary bamboccioni. Literally “big babies,” these are grown adults, often well into their forties, still tucked into their childhood bedroom, still showing up for Sunday lunch (il pranzo della domenica) like clockwork, and still letting mamma do the laundry.

Don’t confuse them with mammoni though — that’s a whole different flavour of clingy, more about heart-eyes for Mum than about the empty wallet.

Bamboccioni are victims of circumstance: shaky job contracts, sky-high rent, and salaries that vanish faster than gelato in August.

Times are certainly changing, but the extended famiglia remains Italy’s real safety net — for better or worse.

Where the word bamboccioni came from

Bamboccioni went mainstream on 4 October 2007, when Italy’s economy minister, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, used it at a parliamentary hearing while presenting a tax break on rent for 20- to 30-year-olds who moved out. Corriere della Sera’s headline quoted him: «Mandiamo i bamboccioni fuori di casa» — let’s send the big babies out of the house. It caused an instant row, and the word has stuck ever since.

The numbers behind the joke

Eurostat puts the average age at which young Italians leave home at 30.2 in 2025, against 26.3 across the EU — the same as Spain, and around nine years later than in Finland or Denmark. About seven in ten Italians aged 18 to 34 live with their parents, compared with roughly half across the EU. In the UK, the ONS puts the share of 20- to 34-year-olds living at home at 28.7%. The surveys and age bands differ, so take that comparison as a rough guide.

Sources: Eurostat, yth_demo_030 and ilc_lvps08 (2025); ONS, Families and households in the UK: 2025; Corriere della Sera, 4 October 2007.

Mammone or bamboccione? The Italian, explained

Both words carry an attitude built into the ending. Mammone is mamma plus -one, the ending that makes things big: a big mummy’s boy. Bamboccione comes from bamboccio, a chubby little child or rag doll, again with -one. Italian does this all the time — un libro is a book, un librone a huge one — and once you know that -one means big and -ino means small, words like portone (the main door) and fratellino (little brother) explain themselves.

Originally shared on LinkedIn.

Curious about Italian culture and language? Learn with me — online Italian lessons, group classes and private tuition. Get in touch.

Watch the 30-second version