Italian working women in transition to motherhood
Abstract
This article deals with the changing relationship between work and motherhood during the transition to the first child among a group of 21 highly educated women living in Turin (Northern Italy), who were interviewed during the months before childbirth together with their male partners in 2010‒2012. It aims at illustrating the tensions between the dominant ideas and ideals of motherhood (‘intensive mothering’ model) and the pressing demands of the changing labour market. The data shows that ideas, plans and decisions concerning childcare arrangements are highly gendered, being influenced by the expectations of partners, employers and colleagues and by a work culture which is not family friendly. Within this Italian social and political context, a mother-to-be faces a dilemma which is perceived as a private issue that concerns only herself. The new transition to parenthood forces women to redefine their gender identity and work career in a highly gendered manner.
The Italian institutional context
In recent decades, the Italian institutional context of the relationship between family and labour market has been marked by several changes and some continuities. Great changes have taken place in Italy in terms of starting a family, since young people tend to stay longer in the parental home, postpone marriage, have their first child later in life and have fewer children (Aassve et al. 2002; Iacovu 2002). In the early 1990s, Italy was one of the countries with the lowest‒low fertility levels in Europe (Kohler et al. 2002). According to Eurostat data (2014), the Italian female employment rate is still remarkably below the European average (46.8 per cent versus 59.6 per cent among women aged 15‒64 in 2014). Furthermore, employment patterns vary strongly according to educational levels and to geographical area as a consequence of the North‒South socioeconomic divide. Dual-earner families prevail in the northern regions of the country, where, i n 2 0 1 1 , 60 per cent to 70 per cent of mothers with very young children are in work (Istat 2011), while in 2012 female employment rates (in the 15 to 64 age group) by education level were 33.8 per cent for lower secondary school leavers and 72.3 per cent for university graduates (Istat 2013a). Moreover, there has been an increasing number of young people and women mainly employed in non-standard jobs, namely who are not in full-time and/or permanent employment (Reyneri 2005). In 2011, the rate of temporary workers among young people in Italy had risen from around 30 per cent in 2000 to 47.6 per cent for men and 53.3 per cent for women (OECD 2012). These changes in the labour market have affected the economic power and life chances of the younger generations of Italians, which has in turn affected their choices vis-à-vis the family. These new circumstances have a particularly negative impact on young women, adding to the traditional difficulties women face in Italy when trying to become mothers and to manage family and work.
Firstly, Italy as whole is characterized by a persistent traditional gender division of housework: even among younger cohorts, the gender gap with respect to domestic chores remains one of the widest in Europe (Eurostat 2008; Naldini and Jurado 2013). This incomplete transformation of gender relations which affects all European countries as well as Western countries outside Europe (Esping-Andersen 2009; Gerson 2010) is particularly evident in Italy, where labour market policy, and more broadly social policies, also remain unbalanced. Despite an important shift in reconciliation policy following the introduction of Law 53/2000 on parental leave,1 whereby childcare is defined as a parental, and not only a maternal, responsibility, the law shows several shortcomings, especially in regard to parents-to-be with unstable job trajectories. The replacement rate is only 30 per cent of pay for a maximum of 6 months for each parent. In addition, non-standard work contracts, which affect mainly men and women in the reproductive age group, are excluded from certain measures which protect motherhood or support reconciliation. Finally, where entitlement does exist, implementation may be difficult to enforce (Bertolini 2006). For instance, at the time of the interviews on which this study is based, a self-employed parent-to-be and the majority of parents-to-be on temporary contracts are entitled to 3 months of parental leave until the first year of the baby’s life, instead of the 6 months until the eighth year of the baby’s life to which parents on permanent contracts are entitled. Moreover, although the new law introduced a ‘use or lose’ quota for the father, the rate of take-up by fathers remains very low, even though it is increasing. According to recent national data based on the Italian Labour Force survey (Istat 2011), among working parents with a child under 8 years, 45.3 per cent of mothers and 6.9 per cent of fathers have taken parental leave at least once.
Secondly, childcare services for children under 3 years of age (‘asili nido’, nursery school) are relatively few: in the 2011/2012 school year the rate of children aged 0‒2 using a public childcare service was 13.5 per cent at national level (Istat 2014) and varied extensively
in geographical terms. Even in Northern regions and in municipalities where the coverage rate was higher, the figure was still well below the 33 per cent ‘Barcelona target’.2 For example, in 2011‒2012, the coverage rate in the municipality of Turin was 14.9 per cent (ibid.) with only 50 per cent of parents’ demand for services being met. Pre-primary school services for 3 to 6 year olds are well developed (by the age of 5, almost 100 per cent of children attend school), but school hours are shorter than a normal working day, so that parents with full-time jobs are unable to combine family and work without some ‘external’ help.
Thirdly, and finally, reconciliation policy in Italy is inadequate at company level, where the flexibilization of work schedules, part-time work and ‘family-friendly’ measures are not widespread and/or many employees are unable to take advantage of them (Fine-Davis et al. 2004; Naldini 2006).
As a consequence of these three main factors, in Italy the dilemma of work versus family is still largely relegated to the private sphere, whilst the tensions between change in women’s lives and resistant institutions and the issues of gender imbalance are not addressed. This is not surprising, because the lack of a strong welfare system means that the family (and family network) is the main provider of care and welfare. The family is perceived, by both the general public and policy makers, as an inexhaustible resource for the ‘weaker’ members of society. This ‘familialism by default’ (Saraceno and Keck 2010) slows down the development of care services, especially for very young children, and the adoption of measures for the reconciliation of work with family life.
Within this national context, this article intends to answer three questions: 1) How do well-educated and working mothers-to-be redefine the relationship between work and motherhood during their transition to the first child? 2) What tensions arise between motherhood and work, if any, in the discourses of mothers-to-be about future care-work
arrangements? 3) How do expectant mothers cope with the main cultural and institutional contradictions of the current model of motherhood in Italy?
To answer these questions, we use a qualitative study based on 42 in-depth interviews conducted in Turin in 2010‒2012 with 21 dual-earner couples, aged 26 to 45 (mostly 30 to 39). The couples were contacted through gynaecologists or midwives, maternity clinics and pre-natal courses. The most part of the couples belongs to the middle class. Most respondents were university graduate professionals. This meant that the sample was rather limited in terms of socio-economic variability and that it was intentionally biased towards couples who were particularly sensitive to gender issues. The majority of subjects were employed in the service sector as teachers, researchers, administrators, social workers, nurses, technicians or lawyers. However, most jobs were unstable in financial and social security terms. Only 5 of the 21 couples were in ‘Fordist employment’, namely in full-time permanent positions. The rest were couples experiencing a mixture of standard and ‘standard’ employment or of non-standard and self-employment. This is an important aspect, since those in non-non-standard employment and/or the self-employed might not be able (by law or in practice) to take maternity and parental leave.
The next section of the article entitled ‘Beliefs, representations, social norms involved in motherhood’, illustrates the ‘normative’ motherhood model, namely the ‘intensive motherhood’ model, which is still the prevalent ideology in Italy and which entrusts the mother with the exclusive task of caring for the newborn in the first months of its life. On the contrary, the father-child relationship is not seen as crucial. This model underpins our interviewees’ ideas and ideals of mothering, as becomes evident in the discussion of their choices vis-à-vis parental leave and work in the third and fourth sections of the article. The third section, entitled ‘Ideals and planning of maternity and work: parental leave taking’, shows that the couples’ ideas, plans and decisions concerning parental leave were highly
gendered. The norm was for the mothers to stay at home for the first months after childbirth, not only because they believed that only mothers could provide ‘proper’ care for the child, but also as a consequence of a work culture that was not family-friendly. Employers’ and colleagues’ expectations of fathers and mothers were also highly gendered: for some mothers these childcare arrangements entered into tension with other spheres of life, and primarily with their work-career desires. The fourth section entitled ‘Interruption or continuity? Choices and constraints concerning paid work’ focuses on work. It seeks to show how pregnancy sets new priorities in relation to work and family life, how future mothers think of these aspects, how they decide how long to stay off work and whether to reduce their working hours or leave their job and, finally, how to adjust to these changes.
Beliefs, representations, social norms involved in motherhood
The centrality of motherhood has always been a distinctive feature of culture and public discourse on women’ life course in Italy. The idea of motherhood as a ‘natural’ and ‘indispensable’ goal of a woman’s life – deeply encouraged by the strong presence of the Catholic Church ‒ was common and widespread in entire cohorts of women at least until the 1970s, when the traditional differentiation of gender roles inside families began to change. The prevalent cultural representation in the Italian public discourse on motherhood before then was centred on an ‘intensive mothering’ model (Hays 1996),3 according to which mothers should be the main caregivers of children and ideal child rearing is time-intensive, guided by experts and emotionally engrossing (Faircloth and Murray 2015).
There was, instead, very little reference to the ‘extensive mothering’ model (Christopher 2010), in which women’s employment is justified with the personal benefits that women themselves receive from paid work, besides the benefits accruing to their children. With the movements of the 1970s, the eruption of feminist discourses and practices focusing on female
subjectivity meant a fundamental break in the public representation of women, with the recognition of the right of women to reclaim the body and choices concerning it (Passerini 1991; Boneschi 2000). The first signs of change in relations between men and women within the family began to appear.4 The growth in women’ level of education and the consequent increase in their attachment to the labour market modified deeply their behaviour in the reproductive sphere but also their attitude toward motherhood.
However, the new participation of women in the labour market did not transform completely societal expectations vis-à-vis their role as caregivers. Women’s life courses have been increasingly characterized by a ‘dual burden’: in the private sphere as caregivers and in the public sphere as workers (Balbo 1978). Whilst in other countries the weakness of the welfare state has encouraged the growth of market substitutes for traditional family services (nannies, crèches and so on), in Italy ‒ as we have seen in the first section of this article ‒ no market substitution has occurred so that the burden has remained with the family. Supported by a strong ethic of mutual assistance extending beyond the boundaries of the nuclear family, and by a strong normative belief that parents are responsible for their children, Italian families have resisted the externalization of service activities.
Another important factor that affected the social representation of motherhood was the culture of experts on childbirth and childrearing. The social implications of the ‘mystique of motherhood’ played a crucial role in the 1960s and 1970s (their influence continues in the contemporary period): science identified the roots of the wellbeing of society in the relationship between mother and child. Only the mother was responsible, in toto, for the baby’s wellbeing. The mother‒child relationship was conceptualized as natural and instinctive: the maternal instinct endows the mother with foolproof mothering skills (Lipperini 2013). Once again, women were encouraged to renounce their self-realization in
the public sphere and to prefer their role as guarantors of family happiness. The authority of the experts in this area still remains unquestioned.
The social representation of fathers in Italy is completely different. The predominant ideas on fatherhood refer mainly to concepts of virility, authority, success, provision of the family’s economic needs and transmission of social norms. Fatherhood is a normative role which sets the boundaries between family and society (Bimbi 2006; Ruspini 2006), with the ‘good father’ helping the children to become socially responsible adults. In this construction of the father's identity, work is an instrument to perform his role better.
More recently, in Italy the construction of parenthood appears to have been characterized by the co-existence of tradition and innovation (Maggioni 2000). Although fatherhood, and especially fathering practices, are changing, they are doing so very slowly (Bertone et al. 2016, showing how new models of fathering are still enmeshed with traditional ones. On the one hand, fathers want to establish a bond with their children and move away from traditional roles; on the other, they are still little involved in childcare (Bimbi, 2006; Ruspini 2006).
At the same time, the rise in women’s educational levels and the consequent increase in their attachment to the labour market have profoundly modified their behaviour in the reproductive sphere as well as their attitude towards motherhood. In the last thirty years, women have tried to claim their right to choose: they do not renounce becoming mothers but they want to decide when to have a baby (later in the life course) and how many children to have (one or two, no more). However, the greater participation of women in the labour market has not completely transformed expectations and obligations concerning their role as caregivers. Cultural factors relative to perceptions of children’s needs, how they should be cared for and by whom makes the choice of having a baby particularly complex in Italy. Data from the Multipurpose Survey conducted by Istat‒Cnel (2003) show that nearly half of
mothers who do not use public childcare services for children under the age of 3 rely on family care arrangements. Moreover, about one in three mothers who use public services declare that they would prefer to rely on care by a family member or a relative if it were available (Saraceno 2003). Although this depends on age and education, many younger parents also believe that family care is the best solution for very young children. Scott et al. (1996), in a cross-country comparative study of gender-role attitudes based on International Social Survey Programme data (ISSP), found that in 1994 only 27 per cent of Italians disagreed with the statement ‘All in all, family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job’, compared with 51 per cent in Great Britain and the USA and 38 per cent in Ireland and the Netherlands. In the 1999 European Value Survey, the level of moderate or strong agreement with the statement ‘A preschool child is likely to suffer if the mother works’, ranged from over 80 percent in Italy (alongside Malta and Austria) to 17 percent in Denmark (Saraceno 2011). In the next Section, we shall see that data relative to our Turin sample confirm the findings of previous surveys and studies which we have just outlined.
Ideals and planning of maternity and work: parental leave taking
The plans and decisions of mothers and fathers-to-be who seemed to know about optional parental leave and their entitlement to it appeared to be highly gendered:5 the typical pattern was that most women were planning to take parental leave for 1 or 2 to 6 months (the maximum entitlement for people in standard employment), whereas their male partners rarely planned to interrupt their careers for full-time family care. Even among couples most willing to share childcare responsibilities equally, there was no clear evidence of fathers intending to take parental leave.
References to gender ideology, cultural motivations and beliefs and the role of ‘a good father and a good mother’ emerged repeatedly in the interviews with pregnant women, thus
confirming these gendered patterns of choices about parental leave. Moreover, mothers taking parental leave often explained that their partners would not be taking leave for economic reasons, namely with arguments related to his ‘male breadwinner’ role. On the one hand, the decision-making process is characterized by scant interaction and bargaining between partners: when questioned about why they have planned this use of parental leave, they often declared that ‘it’s something that came naturally’ or ‘we have not talked a lot...’. On the other hand, we note lack of information about the rights of the father-workers. These two aspects seem to indicate reluctance ‒ and the consequent need for reflexivity ‒ to deviate from this social norm.
Respondents assumed that it was natural and normal for the mother to take parental leave because they believed that the presence of the mother was ‘good for the baby’ in the first and a half year of life (and, in many cases, beyond this age) and because they considered that a ‘good mother’ had the greatest, nearly exclusive, responsibility for childcare. Biological facts, such as breastfeeding, played a decisive role in these considerations, which automatically made the role of the father secondary in the early stages of the child’s life. The father’s role was perceived as increasing in importance subsequently, as the potential for interaction with the child also increased. Parental roles and tasks were defined as separate and distinct along gender lines.
In several cases, mothers referred to expert knowledge of pediatricians, psychologists and other figures, who were considered valid and reliable for defining appropriate behavioural patterns and lifestyles (Favretto and Zaltron 2013), to legitimize their ideals of care, their beliefs about what was ‘best for the child’, parental roles and tasks and, consequently, their strategies for care and work reconciliation. It was usually the mother who took parental leave, while the father did so only rarely. The narratives of respondents yielded, in several cases, a picture of the culture of parenting and care which required the mother to take care of the baby
in his/her early life, but ‘guided by experts’ (Faircloth et al. 2013). Their beliefs and ideas of care corresponded closely to the ‘intensive motherhood’ model (Hays 1996).
Here is how Agnese explains how they decided that she, rather than her husband, would take parental leave:6
Entrambi siamo convinti, ne sono convinta, almeno dalle letture che ho fatto, che sia indispensabile la presenza della mamma per il bambino perché poi è dal terzo anno che il bambino inizia a sviluppare la socialità ed è lì che la figura del padre inizia a essere poi più cruciale perché è il suo tramite per il mondo esterno … credendo in questa cosa qua, di conseguenza … (Agnese Mercorella, segretaria, 36)
[In our opinion, I’m convinced of it, at least from things I have read, the mother's presence is indispensable for the baby because children start to develop sociality when they are three. It’s then that the father figure starts to be crucial because he is the child’s interface with the outside world… because we believe in these things… (Agnese Mercorella, secretary, 36)]
Similarly, the culture widespread in the workplace considers the mother to be the most appropriate provider of childcare. Many interviewees reported that the work environment, employers and colleagues would be hostile to a ‘dad at home’. This applied mainly to private-sector workers, though employees of the public private-sector, generally perceived as more ‘family friendly’, also reported varying degrees of latent hostility towards a father taking parental leave. For example, Rachele, a 33-year-old university researcher on a fixed-term scholarship,
was entitled to maternity leave but not parental leave. Her husband, on the other hand, was entitled to parental leave and she would have liked him to take it:
No, io non credo che l’avrebbe utilizzato, prenderlo proprio per dei mesi in modo continuativo; penso che gli avrebbe creato molte difficoltà prenderlo perché lavora in un ambiente in cui non è assolutamente normale il fatto che l’uomo lo prenda. (Rachele Cerfoglio, ricercatrice, 33)
[I don’t think he would have taken it, not for a few months continuously, anyway. Taking parental leave would have caused him many difficulties because men don’t usually go on parental leave at his workplace. (Rachele Cerfoglio, researcher, 33)]
If this is the cultural frame in which future mothers and fathers have to operate, choices about parental leave and strategies to reconcile work and family are affected by direct and indirect mechanisms of discrimination (or facilitation) at work in professional markets and in the workplace. The statements of some respondents made evident the difficulty of putting their ideals of care into practice because of an organization and a culture of gender and parenting in the workplace perceived as not being family friendly.
An example of dissatisfaction and frustration with a work environment perceived as hostile and unwilling to meet work‒family balance needs was provided by Marta, who lived with a sports trainer. Before the birth of their first child, Marta felt a strong sense of responsibility for her work, despite relational problems with her (female) boss, so that she had not taken parental leave:
Non tutti capiscono le esigenze di una donna mamma ... qui in Italia […] non ti aiutano; non ti aiutano né nel decider di avere un figlio, né comunque di viverti bene quello che ti stai vivendo […] nella mia gravidanza non sono mai stata male, non ho mai avuto da chiedere dei momenti alla mia titolare, prendevo giusto l’ora se sapevo che avevo le visite […] però sempre con qualcuno che storceva sempre il naso, barabin barabam […] vivi sempre con l'ansia perché ti possono dire che comunque sì, sto a casa, quando torno mi farà patire le pene dell’inferno. È tutto così, e anche la gestione dopo comunque è critica. (Marta Solarino, segretaria, 30)
[Not everyone understands the needs of a woman who is a mother... here in Italy [...] they don’t help you; nor do they help you in the decision to have a child, nor in coping with what you’re going through [...] during my pregnancy I was never ill, I never had to ask my employer for time off. I only took the time necessary for check-ups, [...] but there was always someone who showed disapproval barabin barabam [...] I’m always anxious because they can say, yes, I’m at home, but when I return they’ll make me suffer the torments of hell. It’s exactly like this, and managing things afterwards will also be critical. (Marta Solarino, secretary, 30)]
In the next Section, we shall examine in more detail how future mothers think of the reconciliation between paid work and childcare, how they decide how long to stay off work and whether to reduce their working hours or leave their job.
The cultural model of the traditional family also had consequences for female and male intentions about paid work, impacting heavily on the attitudes of our interviewees. With the approach of childbirth, during the nine months of pregnancy the parents redefined their priorities and, on the basis of these, they thought about reorganizing their working life and reconciling work and family.
While the father’s help in childcare was seen as secondary, the ideal for the majority of the women was to reduce their work commitment to take care of their children, almost always taking time off work for as long as possible and whenever they could, in some cases also asking to work part time or fewer hours, even when they loved their jobs. Some women thought that they could invest less in work temporarily because, being a professional, ‘I could go back to work whenever I wanted’. However, data and research on women’s career breaks coinciding with maternity show that the longer the absence from the employment market, the more difficult and less likely returning to it becomes (Scherer and Reyneri 2009; Solera 2009). According to the qualitative data we have collected, even women who have invested a great deal in education and had long-term positive career aspirations tend to reduce their work involvement during pregnancy.
Rachele, who has already been quoted earlier, had the chance of a better career in the long term, having invested heavily in doctoral training in an industry – food safety – which was expanding rapidly. She was on a fixed-term scholarship, without social protection and on a low salary. However, her long-term prospect was a managerial job in the public sector:
Quando mi sono laureata e ho iniziato a lavorare all’università forse ero più ambiziosa. Adesso con il matrimonio e la gravidanza forse punto anche su altre cose, nel senso che sono un po’ rassegnata che andrà come deve andare però ci tengo anche a costruire fuori dal lavoro, ci tengo alla mia famiglia, ci tengo ad avere un bimbo e
altri se ne verranno anche a costo di sacrificare la carriera lavorativa. (Rachele Cerfoglio, ricercatrice, 33)
[When I graduated and started working at university, I think I was more ambitious. Now, after marriage and a pregnancy, I am perhaps focusing also on other things, in the sense that I’m a bit resigned to the fact that things will go as they must. But I want also to do something beyond my job, my family is important to me, I want to have a baby and more than one if they come, even if this means I have to sacrifice my career. (Rachele Cerfoglio, researcher, 33)]
In many cases, in the early years of cohabitation or marriage, couples had ‘challenged’ traditional gender roles, for example by sharing housework and investing in both their careers. Yet, after childbirth, they tended to move closer to the traditional model. While they still negotiated the sharing of household chores, they did not share childcare in the early years: a good mother could not be a career woman. It is true that only a minority of females wanted to be career women. Great importance was given to the fact that the child needed the constant presence of the mother, a belief derived, as we have seen, from books by experts but also held by the couple’s family members and work colleagues. For women, this meant choosing between home and work and not demanding greater work‒family life reconciliation or more male participation in childcare. Therefore, they proposed to reduce the mother’s work commitments, thus finding the solution to reconciliation in the private sphere, even when childcare took place outside the home.
The father had been at the centre of the relationship with the child in the first years after childbirth only in rare, but very specific, situations. One woman, for example, had an important full-time job as an aeronautical engineer in a large company, where she earned a
medium to high salary. For this reason, she stated that she had no plans to reduce her work commitments after childbirth:
Sì, pensiamo di continuare a lavorare entrambi, anche perché ti garantisce anche la possibilità di vivere poi in maniera tranquilla, i figli portano un sacco di spese, sono tanto carini, e quindi gli stipendi attuali e il costo della vita, uno stipendio in famiglia non è sufficiente, ma del resto mi piace anche l’idea di lavorare. (Susanna Poli, ingegnere aeronautico, 32)
[Yes, we’re thinking about both of us continuing to work because it also gives you the guarantee of living a better life, children come with lots of expenses, they are so nice, and so with current salaries and living costs, a single salary is not enough, but on the other hand I also like the idea of working (Susanna Poli, aeronautical engineer, 32)]
When a couple decides to depart from the accepted norm, as in this case, they may face problems if the social and institutional context tries to reimpose it. In Susanna’s case, there were concerns about how the workplace would respond to her pregnancy, which made her delay announcing it:
Continuo a non parlarne, perché ho paura che non mi coivolgano nei progetti nei prossimi mesi e inciderebbe pesantemente sul mio lavoro, per cui voglio aspettare ancora un pochino (Susanna Poli, ingegnere aeronautico, 32)
[I don’t want to talk about it yet, because I’m worried they won’t involve me in the projects in the coming months and that would have a highly negative impact on my work, so I want to wait a little bit longer. (Susanna Poli, aeronautical engineer, 32)]
In Italy the idea persists that a woman will become less committed to her job after having a child. As a result, employers try to hinder the careers of new mothers or to interrupt their contracts. There still exists the practice of the ‘white letter’, whereby women are asked to sign a blank sheet of paper when they are hired: the employers can use the paper for ‘voluntary’ resignation in the case of maternity.
Some situations caused difficulties which induced couples not only to make different arrangements, but also to question the traditional gendered family model. In one of the couples interviewed, the man, who had been laid off for more than a year with no hours, while the woman was employed full-time with a permanent contract in an industrial firm, said:
Per certi versi spero di tornare a lavorare e per ovvie ragioni e per altri quasi quasi no, nel senso che semplificherebbe da un certo punto di vista la gestione della bambina, nel senso che non avremmo bisogno di nessuno che ce la guarda, cioè potrei tranquillamente guardarla io. (Enzo Loto, cassa integrazione, 41)
[On the one hand, I hope to return to work, for obvious reasons, but on the other hand, I almost don’t want to, in the sense that it would make looking after our daughter easier, because we wouldn’t need anyone to look after her, I could simply do it myself. (Enzo Loto, on redundancy benefit, 41)]
Finally, the interviews confirmed the strong influence of the workplace in structuring the idea of what a good father is and the extent to which the father could or should participate in childcare for his own, in addition to the child’s, good. Almost no workplace encouraged reconciliation by their unwillingness to grant parental leave. Taking time off for a month or asking for reduced working hours were frowned upon for men, just as had been frowned upon for women, as we saw in Section 3. This strongly influenced their idea of what it means to be a good father or mother and how legitimate it was for men to take part in childcare in the first months after birth. In the public sector, leave of absence taken by men for reasons of reconciliation was seen as more acceptable and their desire to be present in the first months of a child’s life more legitimate. Conversely, in the private sector, a good father was one who took care of the financial aspects of family life and, as childbirth approached, worked harder to provide extra income:
Domanda: E se non ci fosse stata la crisi economica che tipo di scelta pensi avrebbe fatto tuo marito? Avrebbe utilizzato il congedo parentale? E se sì, per quanto tempo?
Risposta: No, io non credo che l’avrebbe utilizzato, prenderlo proprio per dei mesi in modo continuativo; penso che gli avrebbe creato molte difficoltà prenderlo perché lavora in un ambiente in cui non è assolutamente normale il fatto che l’uomo lo prenda. Forse l’allattamento sì, però l’assenza continuativa da lavoro secondo me lo avrebbe messo in difficoltà. (Rachele Cerfoglio, ricercatrice, 33)
[Question: If it hadn’t been for the economic crisis, what kind of choice do you think your husband would have made? Would he have taken parental leave? And if so, for how long?
Answer: No, I don’t think he would have taken it, not for a few months continuously, anyway. I think it would have caused a lot of difficulties for him because he works in an environment where it is absolutely not normal for men to take it. Maybe he would have during breastfeeding, but a continued absence from work, I think would have caused him difficulties. (Rachele Cerfoglio, researcher, 33)]
Moreover, as previous research has shown, there did not seem to be much pressure on institutions to facilitate work‒family life reconciliation. The latter seemed to be considered a private issue and women, even those who loved their work and had invested in their educations and careers, were resigned to sacrificing their working life, at least in the first year after childbirth, for the sake of their child. Among the couples interviewed, only one woman intended to leave work, whereas the others were planning to continue working, with some of them intending to ask for part-time work or reduced working hours.
Conclusion
The majority of the women (and men) in the sample had ideals and gave representations of parenthood in line with what is maintained by the ‘experts’: the presence of the mother is considered best for the child, especially for the first year and a half.
It would seem that maternal and paternal roles for Italian parents-to-be continue to be based on very different assumptions. For mothers, the scenario of motherhood seems still to be ‘intensive mothering’, with the central idea that the ‘good mother’ is the one who is capable of deciphering the child’s needs and desires and who places the child’s wellbeing ahead of her own. There is very little reference to the ‘extensive mothering’ model theorized by Christopher (2010), in which women’s employment is justified with the personal benefits
that women themselves receive from paid work, besides the benefits accruing to their children, in which mothers delegate substantial amounts of the day-to-day childcare to others. After the baby’s arrival the majority of the couples plan to change their behaviour from an egalitarian one to a neo-traditional one. While it is still equality-oriented with respect to homemaking, it is not so with respect to work, given that the women are planning to reduce their working hours and attachment to work. In addition, as we have seen, if a ‘good mother’ is one who stays at home with the new-born baby and, possibly, reduces her involvement with work, a ‘good father’ is one who reinforces his commitment to work, even in the egalitarian couple.
These resistances to change are also due to the lack of public debate and public support on parenthood. The lack of a public discourse that proposed a different, alternative model of motherhood and fatherhood meant that the couples were unable to redefine their identities during the transitions to parenthood. This may be the reason why we did not find representations of the ‘negotiated family’ (Giddens 1991), namely a family that does not follow traditional gender roles but discusses and negotiates form and content of these roles. In fact, our couples hardly discussed gender roles. On the basis of existing data on female labour market participation (Eurostat, 2009), we can expect that many of the women would return to work after the birth of the child. However, it is likely that their involvement in work will change in the first years after birth, because of their belief that the organization of the baby’s care is mainly women’s business.
If, as it seems, Italy is in transition between different models of construction of gender roles, it should be noted that behaviours are quicker to change than cultural models, mainly because they are often motivated or initiated by practical necessities. If beliefs and ideals about what is best for the child shape very different roles for fathers and mothers, with all the repercussions on their job investment, most of our respondents will probably encounter a
number of difficulties when trying to realize their childcare ideals and their work‒family conciliation preferences.
In several cases, the institutional context in which couples have to plan childcare arrangements and work‒family reconciliation strategies for the near future does not fit well with their beliefs and ideals. For example, most mothers and fathers thought that it was good for the mother to stay at home with the baby for one year to one and a half years (some mothers stated that two and even three years would be better). Yet, since the maximum duration of parental leave in Italy is 6 months for each parent, they will be unable to put into practice this ‘mother-centred’ ideal, which is upheld, ironically, by the couples, employers and the wider society alike. The state seems to respond more to the preferences of employers than those of the families regarding parental leave, given that women would like to stay longer at home after the birth of the child. At the same time, institutions may facilitate the work‒family reconciliation issue after the baby is one year old. Several mothers would have liked to stay with the child for a prolonged period, namely for the 9‒10 months of the entire parental leave, but could not do so, either because they had non-standard contracts and were not entitled to the full period or because of the negative consequences that this choice might have on their work careers.
There are evident tensions today between what an intensive parenting culture prescribes (which partly overlaps with what science and experts say and suggest) and what is realistically possible in the capitalist neoliberal societies. This is not only because of the latter’s emphasis on individualism and self-realization through paid work, but also because of the uneasy relationships of the scheduling of care time with the logic of the work place (Hays 1996). Limited access to parental leave and to flexible working hours, together with a lack of control over their workloads, may make it harder for mothers and fathers to respond to the
changing needs during the life course of their families and the demands of caring for their children (Giallo et al. 2013).
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1 In Italy there are three different kinds of leave: 1) Maternity leave (Congedo di maternità) lasting twenty weeks. The payment is 80 per cent of earnings with no ceiling for salaried workers. This leave is compulsory for female employees and workers who are enrolled in ‘Gestione separata’ (‘separate administration’) by the Italian National Social Security Institute, who do not have any type of pension (e.g. fixed-term workers). It is optional for self-employed female worker. 2) Paternity leave (Congedo di paternità) consisting in one day of compulsory leave. Fathers can take two additional days if the mother agrees to transfer these two days from her Maternity leave allocation. All male employees are entitled to take Paternity leave; 3) Parental leave (Congedo parentale): each parent is entitled to 6 months’ leave, paid at 30 per cent of earnings. It is an individual and non-transferable entitlement and is not compulsory. For more details, see Addabbo and Giovannini 2013: 163.
2 At the 2002 Barcelona Summit, the European Council set the targets of childcare provisions to 90 per cent of children between 3 years old and the mandatory school age and 33 per cent of children under 3 years by 2010.
3 According to Hays, intensive mothering ‘requires the day-to-day labor of nurturing the child, listening to the child, attempting to decipher the child’s needs and desires, struggling to meet the child’s wishes, and placing the child’s well-being ahead of their [mothers’] own convenience’ (1996: 115).
4 In this period several changes in legislation promoted the transformation of gender and family relationships: the abolition of the differential treatment of adultery for males and females (1968), the introduction of divorce (1970), the reform of family law (1975) and the legalization of abortion (1978).
5 About 20 per cent of interviewees appeared to be unaware of the existence of parental leave or to have only partial and approximate information about it (‘I/we have not found out about it’ was a recurrent statement). The majority of these interviewees were either men who did not know whether they were entitled or not to parental leave or women who did not know whether their partners were
entitled to it.
