2023 recorded a new historic low in births in Italy, now firmly below 400 thousand units, with a decrease of 3.6% compared to the previous year. Women choose not to have children or have fewer than they would like: in the female population of fertile age, conventionally defined as between 15 and 49 years, the average number of children per woman, in fact, is 1.20, showing a decrease compared to 2022 (1.24). Very far from the 2010 figure, when the average number of children per woman had reached the relative maximum recorded in the last twenty years, equal to 1.44. The contraction in the birth rate that has been accompanying Italy for decades now also involves the foreign component of the population (in 2023 there will be 3,000 fewer births compared to the previous year).
Italy is also the European country with the highest average age of women at the time of the birth of their first child (31.6 years), with a significant percentage of first births to mothers over 40 (8.9%, a rate lower only than that of Spain). 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). These are some of the main data contained in the 9th edition of the report “Le Equilibriste, maternity in Italy” by Save the Children – the Organization that has been fighting for over 100 years to save girls and boys at risk and guarantee them a future -, released today a few days before Mother’s Day, which takes stock of the infinite challenges that women in Italy have to face when they choose to become mothers. Like every year, the study also includes the Mothers’ Index, developed by ISTAT for Save the Children, a ranking of the Italian regions where it is easier for mothers to live. This year too, the Index indicates the Autonomous Province of Bolzano as leading the mother-friendly territories, followed by Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, while Basilicata brings up the rear, preceded at the bottom of the ranking by Campania and Sicily.
If the postponement of motherhood and low fertility are the result of numerous contributing factors, the data reveal that the more women’s participation in the labor market increases, the more the fertility rate increases. An element to take into due consideration in a job market that still suffers from a very strong gender gap. From the data of the Save the Children Report, it emerges that in Italy the female employment rate (aged 15-64 years) was 52.5% in 2023, a lower value than the European Union average (65.8% ) by as much as 13 percentage points[4]. The difference between the employment rate of men and women in our country, in the same year, was 17.9 percentage points[5], much more marked than the differences observed at EU27 level (9.4 percentage points) and second, very slightly, only to Greece, where the difference is 18 percentage points. For women, the issue of balancing work and family remains critical for those who carry out unpaid care work in their family.
An indicator of the difficulties that mothers face in reconciling family and work commitments is represented by the number of employed women between the ages of 25 and 54: compared to a female employment rate of 63.8%, women without children who work reach 68.7%, while only just over half of those with two or more minor children are employed (57.8%). On the contrary, for men of the same age, the total employment rate is 83.7%, with a variation ranging from 77.3% for those without children, up to 91.3% for those with a minor child and 91.6% for those with two or more.
There are marked territorial disparities, to the detriment of the regions of Southern Italy where for women, employment stops at 48.9% for those without children (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 same disparities are also noted for men, although with different values: in the South, men without children who are employed reach 61.5% (86.7% in the North and 81.3% in the Centre), while those with minor children reach 82.8% (96.7% in the North and 94.5% in the Centre).
Even looking at the data on voluntary resignations after parenthood, it is clear how the birth of a child affects gender inequality in the world of work. It is mainly mothers who resign, with their first child and within the first year of life. During 2022[6]In fact, a total of 61,391 voluntary resignation validations were carried out for parents of children aged 0-3 throughout the national territory, an increase of 17.1% compared to the previous year. 72.8% of the total (equal to 44,699) concerns women, while 27.2% concerns men (equal to 16,692), with a greater growth of female ones compared to the previous year. This year too, a significant difference emerges in the motivations between men and women for validation. For women, in fact, the main difficulty is the difficulty in reconciling work and child care: 41.7% attributed this difficulty to the lack of assistance services, while 21.9% indicated problems related to the organization of work. Overall, caregiving challenges accounted for 63.6% of all validation reasons given by working mothers. For men, however, the predominant motivation is of a professional nature: 78.9% declared that the end of the employment relationship was due to a change of company and only 7.1% reported child care needs .
The data also shows that in Italy, full-time work is more common among men than women, the opposite happens for part-time work. In general in our country only 6.6% of men who work do so part-time, compared to 31.3% of women workers, who in half of the cases (15.4%) suffer an involuntary part-time job. Among those who have children, the percentage of women employed part-time increases significantly (36.7%) compared to those without children (23.5%). Among men, however, the figure goes from 8.7% for those without children to 4.6% for fathers.
“In Italy we talk a lot about the birth crisis, but not enough attention is paid to the concrete living conditions of today’s “balancing” mothers, who are burdened by almost all of the care work. A country in which mothers are still in too much trouble, still divided between North and South, with regions that are 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 represents one of the main factors of impoverishment in our country. We must sanction every form of discrimination linked to maternity, make family audits mandatory and promote the full application of the law on equal pay. It is also necessary to ensure that newborns have access to early childhood education services as well as pediatric care. The European examples underline how, in order for the reforms to have a positive effect on the well-being of families, and therefore indirectly also on fertility, they must be stable. Frequent reforms and reversals of family policies make them unpredictable, unreliable and confusing, with a potentially negative impact on families and women in particular.” said Daniela Fatarella, General Director of Save the Children Italy.
