Another record, but still with a minus sign. 2023 recorded a new historic low in births in Italy, which have long been stuck below 400 thousand units. Still a decline of 3.6% compared to the previous year. In short, women choose not to have children or have fewer than they would like: in the female population of childbearing age, conventionally defined as between 15 and 49 years old, the average number of children per woman is, in fact, 1.20, with a further decline compared to 2022, when the figure was already a worrying 1 ,24.
Without going back to the years of the economic boom (the children of that era, difficult but full of hope, in youth parlance are in fact the boomers), just look at the data of 2010, when the average number of children per woman had reached the relative maximum recorded in the last twenty years, equal to 1.44 . The decline in the birth rate has been accompanying Italy for decades now. The litmus test of the chronic insufficiency of childcare services and family policies is the contraction in births which is also heavily affecting foreign families of the population: in 2023, 3 thousand fewer births than the previous year.
The comparison with the countries beyond the Alps is embarrassing. Italy is in fact the European country with the highest average age of women at the time of the birth of their first child (31.6 years), a sign of a series of difficulties that force many women to have to postpone the birth of their first (and often only) child. With a significant percentage of first born to mothers over 40 (8.9%, only Spain is worse). The average age of mothers at childbirth remains almost unchanged compared to the previous year (32.5 years in 2023 and 32.4 in 2022).
The analysis of the very difficult job of being a mother in Italy is once again offered this year by Save the Children, which on the eve of Mother’s Day next Sunday is releasing the 9th edition of the report “Le Equilibriste, motherhood in Italy”. A reasoned and documented assessment of the infinite challenges that women in Italy have to face when they choose to become mothers. The study also includes the Mothers’ Index, developed by Istat for Save the Children, i.e. the ranking of the Italian regions where it is easier for mothers to live. The Autonomous Province of Bolzano confirms itself as the leading territory among those “friends of mothers”, followed by Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. Last but not least is Basilicata, preceded by Campania and Sicily.
Postponement of motherhood and low fertility are the result of numerous contributory causes. In Italy the labor market still suffers from a very strong gender gap.
The female employment rate (15-64 years) was 52.5% in 2023, a value 13 points lower than the European Union average (65.8%).
percentages. The difference between the employment rate of men and women in our country was 17.9 percentage points, when the figure at EU 27 level is 9.4 percentage points. Worse than us, but only slightly, is Greece, where the difference is 18 percentage points. The issue of balancing work and family, therefore, remains critical for those who carry out unpaid care work in the family.
A flashing light of the gender gap under “work” is the employment rate among women with or without children, compared to that of men. Women without children who work reach 68.7%, those with two or more minor children are 57.8%.. For men of the same age, the employment rate ranges from 77.3% for those without children, up to 91.3% for those with one minor child and 91.6% for those with two or more. Even for maternity, Italy is split in half. In the South, employment for women stops at 48.9% if they are without children (while it is 79.8% in the North and 74.4% in the Centre) and drops to 42% in the presence of minor children, reaching 40% for women with two or more minor children (73.2% in the north and 68.3% in the centre).
The data on voluntary resignations after parenthood also confirm how the birth of a child affects gender inequality in work. It is mainly mothers who resign, with their first child and within the first year of life. In 2022, there were 61,391 validations of voluntary resignations for parents of children aged 0-3 across the national territory, up 17.1% compared to the previous year. 72.8% women, 27.2% men. The causes? Intuitable: the main one is the difficulty in reconciling work and child care, 41.7% attributed this difficulty to the lack of assistance services, 21.9% attributed this to problems related to the organization of work.
«In Italy there is a lot of talk about the birth crisis – he says the dgeneral director of Save the Children Italy, Daniela Fatarella – but not enough attention is paid to the concrete living conditions of today’s “balancing” mothers. Mothers are still in too much trouble, with regions more or less welcoming to women with children. We need to intervene in an integrated way on multiple levels. Today the birth of a child is one of the main factors of impoverishment.” According to the director of Save the Children, it is therefore necessary to «sanction every form of discrimination against motherhood and promote the full application of the law on equal pay. And ensure newborns have access to early childhood education services as well as pediatric care. The European examples – warns Daniela Fatarella – underline how, in order for the reforms to have a positive effect on the well-being of families, and therefore on fertility, they must be stable. The frequent reforms and reversals of family policies make them unpredictable, unreliable and confusing”, concludes the director.
Organic and stable reforms, supported economically and politically, can counteract the decline, if not even reverse the trend. It happened in several European countries. From 2000 to today, France is the only European country that has remained consistently close to the two-child threshold per woman, although since 2015 the country has seen its fertility rate gradually decline. Her approach focuses on a complex system of financial support for families and on guaranteeing access to childcare services. Finland experienced a sharp recovery in the birth rate between 2019 and 2021, with a decline in 2022. In that year it adopted one of the most innovative parental leave reforms in Europe, with the possibility of transferring part of the quota to the other parent. Access to early childhood services is also guaranteed to a very high percentage of children, between 2 and 3 years old at 69.6%. In Germany the fertility rate increased between 2020 and 2021, but had a drastic decline again in 2022, from 1.58 to 1.46 children per woman: financial support, part-time parental leave while working, right to a place in a nursery. In the end, the Czech Republic has progressively increased its fertility rate since 2011, up to 1.83 children per woman in 2021, although in 2022, like and more than in other European countries, here too the rate has started to fall again. The rate of services for children aged 0-2 years is very low, 6% compensated by a traditional care model, with mothers’ long absence from work.
