Mothers as social safety nets. The demographic winter comes from here

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The demographic winter is the winter of mothers: less and less, more and more alone, more and more on the margins of the labor market, nailed to free caregiving. Penalized not only compared to men, but also to women without children. With fractures that widen year after year.

If we really want to reverse the downward spiral of the birth rate in Italy, we need to look at motherhood. Without ideologies, with pragmatism and urgency. The numbers are there for all to see, if you want to see them. Starting from the demographics that have come under the spotlight in recent days: births in 2022 plummeted to 392,000, the average age of having a first child rose to 32.4 years, the average number of children per woman reduced to 1.24 (against 1.8 in France and 1.53 in Germany), the fertility rates which increase over the age of 30 and continue to fall among the youngest, the protracted postponement of the decision to have a child which results too often in a definitive renunciation. According to Istat, two thirds of the drop in births is due to the “structure effect”: there are one million fewer women aged between 15 and 49 than in 2008.

Care work

Instead, they are a million more than 20 years ago, and have reached 2.5 million, le single parent families, with a clear predominance of mothers (80.9%). Women who are at a much higher risk of slipping into poverty and who shoulder the brunt of childcare themselves. But this also happens to mothers who live with their partner. Because it is true that collaboration in activities involving children is improving (such as accompanying them to school or to sports, with 57.4% of mothers and 55.3% of fathers detected by the Inapp Plus 2022 report).

But household chores remain the prerogative of mothers: 72.3% of women claim to take care of them against 28.4% of men. Same music for meals: at the stove, as per the stereotype, mothers prevail with 79.7% against a narrower 36.3% of fathers. All unpaid work that absorbs time and energy. And that explains the lower participation of mothers in the labor market, the paid and socially recognized one, and in public life.

At work

To the well-known gap between the employment rates of women and men is added the gap between women with and without children. The Bes report highlights an employment rate of 55.5% among women aged between 25 and 49 with a child up to six years of age, which rises to 76.6% for those without children. According to the Mef’s 2022 Gender Report, the ratio between the employment rate of working mothers with children under 6 and that of childless workers is 73%: this means that out of 100 employed childless women, there are only 73 working mothers . Also because for one in five women, becoming a mother means saying goodbye to the world of work, increasingly irreversibly.

It is again INAPP that records that the share of women with at least one child who have never worked to take care of them is equal to 11.1%, compared to a European average of 3.7%. In the latest 2021 report, the Labor Inspectorate records 37,662 terminations of work by women with children (71.8% of the total) against 14,774 by fathers (28.2%).

The nature of these resignations tells of the umpteenth rift in working conditions: for mothers it is the difficulty reconciling work and family (representing 65.5% of the total reasons), while only 21.7% refers to cases of transfer to another company. Which is instead the most common reason for resignation among fathers with 78.2%. Obstacles related to the need to reconcile are not seen here: only 7.4% of men with children refer to it.

The disparity of leave

The litmus test comes from the bleak data of the INPS 2022 annual report on leave. Between 2012 and 2021, children under 3 could practically only count on their mothers: for 87% of children in this age group, the only parent who used the leave during the year was their mother , for 10% the father and for about 3% both parents. Not to mention the cases in which there is a disabled child in the family.

“In 2021 – explains the report – only 23.28% of men had taken advantage of an extension of parental leave to assist a disabled child”. This means that it is always and still the mothers who take charge of the assistance of these children or young people. And not only of them, as INAPP notes: in supporting relatives or friends, the elderly or the sick, there is a clear prevalence of female commitment, with 30.9% of women who usually take care of this activity against the 15.6% of men. Caregiving as destiny (and unacknowledged social damper).

Part-time mothers

It is no wonder that part-time work remains the undisputed reign of women: in the 7th Save the Children report “Le Equilibriste: maternity in Italy 2022” it is recalled that it is the contract of 39.2% of those with two or more children minors. Nor is it surprising that women’s average wages are 20% lower than men’s (over €7,000 a year) for full-time employment and 16% lower (over €3,000) for part-time work.

Is there really a question why, faced with the crossroads between quitting getting unemployment benefits and continuing to work, many mothers choose the first option? “On average – underlines INPS – mothers are willing to give up over 30,000 euros in long-term income to obtain around 5,000 euros more in short-term benefits”. The National Insurance Institute certifies that “part of these choices derive from the excessive cost of returning to work after maternity leave, due to the lack of childcare services”.

A well-known void, to the point that the Pnrr allocates 4.6 billion to the creation of nursery schools and nursery schools for 264,480 new places by 2026. Provided that the delays accumulated up to now do not jeopardize the achievement of the objective.

“Starting a family is turning into a titanic effort, rather than being a shared value that everyone recognizes and supports,” Pope Francis told the States General of the birth rate. For winter not to turn into glaciation, there is only one way: to start again from the mothers. Stop bullying them.

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