Italian women give birth more and more ahead of the years, now after 30, on average at 33, and the excessive use of caesarean section continues even if there are signs of slowing down. Excluding Caesarean sections, almost all fathers (95.4%) attend the birth. This is the picture that comes from the annual report of the Ministry of Health on the Childbirth Assistance Certificate (CeDAP), relating to 2021 in 364 birth points.
88% of women prefer public facilities and 62.8% of births take place in structures with high volumes of activity, over 1000 births per year. In 2.9 pregnancies out of 100, women have resorted to assisted fertilization.
Differences from region to region
The birth rate varies from 5.2 births per thousand women of childbearing age in Sardinia to 9.7 in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano compared to a national average of 6.8. The Regions of the Center all have a birth rate with values below the national average. In the Southern Regions, the highest birth rates are those of Campania, Calabria and Sicily, which have values higher than the national average.
Fertility is slightly down compared to previous years: in 2021 the average number of children per woman was 1.25 (compared to 1.46 in 2010). The highest levels of fertility are in the North in the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano and in the South in Campania and Sicily. The least prolific regions by far are Sardinia and Molise.
The infant mortality rate, which measures mortality in the first year of life, was 2.88 children per thousand live births in 2018. In the last 10 years this rate has continued to decrease throughout the Italian territory, although in more recent years there has been a slowdown in this trend.
Furthermore, significant territorial differences remain. The neonatal mortality rate represents mortality within the first month of life and contributes over 70% to infant mortality. Deaths in the first month of life are mainly due to the conditions of pregnancy and childbirth or to congenital malformations of the baby.
Foreign mothers
In 2021, about 19.9% of births relate to mothers of non-Italian citizenship, a phenomenon is more widespread in the areas of the country with a greater foreign presence, i.e. in the Center-North, where more than 26% of births are from mothers not Italian; in particular, in Emilia Romagna, Liguria and Marche over 30% of births refer to foreign mothers. The most represented geographical areas of origin are Africa (28.0%) and the European Union (21.4%). Mothers of Asian and South American origins represent respectively 19.0% and 8.7% of foreign mothers.
More and more working mothers
57.7% of mothers work, 25.8% are housewives and 16.5% are unemployed or looking for their first job. 51.4% of foreign women are housewives compared to 64.9% of Italian women who have a job.