Cohabitation has been spreading in the population during the last thirty years, and this is one of the most striking aspects of wider social changes that have taken place throughout the industrialized world. However, this change did not take place uniformly across Europe. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate around the compatibility of cohabitation experiences with the Italian cultural context. Using an individual-level diffusion approach we obtain results that are consistent with the crucial role that family ties play in the choice of cohabitation in place of (or before) marriage.