Childcare in Italy among migrants and natives: who uses which type and why?

Abstract

The Italian welfare state is characterised by a preference for income transfers over transfers in kind and the marginal role of policies aimed directly at supporting the family. Despite the growing participation of women in the labour market, the Italian welfare system still assumes the family, with its unbalanced gender division of housework and its intergenerational solidarity, to be the primary provider of protection and support. As a result, in Italy in 2019 only 26.9% of children under 3 years of age were enrolled in formal childcare, which is below the European average. In this context, births from at least one foreign parent had increased over time, and foreign national children accounted for 14.0% of all children aged 0–3 in 2019. Despite this, migrants are still seen as ‘suppliers’ rather than citizens who, as parents, are potential consumers of childcare services. Aspects related to the use of childcare by migrants and differences compared to natives in Italy are currently understudied. We use the 2012 Birth Sample Survey by the Italian National Institute of Statistics to fill this gap. Mothers were interviewed about 18–21 months after having given birth: information on sociodemographic characteristics of both parents was collected, including their use of childcare services, their reasons for not using them, their unmet need for childcare services, and the lack of access to the job market due to care work. Our study aims to understand childcare patterns among migrants and the differences between them and those of the native-born population. We found that Italian mothers use informal care more than migrants. Unlike the evidence from other international studies, our results show that migrant mothers use daycare for children aged 0–3 more than native-born mothers. However, we found that the migrants who had arrived as children show patterns more similar to natives. This finding might be associated with a better knowledge of the system and a more extensive network (including grandparents) in Italy. Similarly, we found that migrant mothers who co-parent with an Italian father use more informal care and experience lower logistical barriers to accessing daycare. In addition, we observed that obstacles to children’s enrolment resulting in an unmet need for daycare are also related to migrant background.

Migrants' choices pertaining to informal childcare in Italy and France: A complex relationship between the origin and destination countries

“…Given these constraints, scholars have demonstrated that migrant parents tend to adopt several informal solutions, with differences driven by family migration patterns (Wall & José, 2004). Previous research has emphasised the role of family structure in the selection of childcare arrangements, such as children's age, the presence of siblings, a partner and grandparents (in good health, co-resident or living nearby), parents' employment status and local and transnational kinship relations, as certain individuals can represent important sources of childcare (Barglowski et al, 2015;Bilecen & Sienkiewicz, 2015;Grysole, 2018;Mussino & Ortensi, 2023;Ryan, 2011aRyan, , 2011bTrappolini et al, 2021Trappolini et al, , 2023Zanasi et al, 2022).…”

“…Most existing studies on childcare focus on the choices of the overall population, generally considering migrants to be childcare providers rather than potential consumers of such services (Mussino & Ortensi, 2023;Williams & Gavanas, 2016). Of course, childcare becomes much more complex when parents are migrants settling in a new country.…”

Introduction to the Thematic Series: Use and consequences of family policies among migrants and their descendants in Europe

“…Moreover, structural hindrances, including limited accessibility and high costs, affect both native and migrant families' childcare service utilization ( Van Lancker & Pavolini, 2023). Our Thematic Series contributes to the literature on childcare use through three articles that pursue different approaches and focus on different migrant populations and migrant generations in different European migrant receiving countries: Eremenko and Unterreiner (2023)-in this Thematic Series) examined the patterns of ECEC enrolment among parents belonging to recent migrant populations in France who have children under the age of 3 years, while Mussino and Ortensi (2023)-in this Thematic Series) investigated the influence of parental age at arrival on variations in childcare use among migrants in Italy, in comparison to the native population. Previous research has identified a gap in the use of formal childcare services between migrant and native families across European countries, with migrants generally using these services less (Biegel et al, 2021;Schober & Spiess, 2013;Schmitz et al, 2023).…”

Multidimensional School-Based and Family-Involved Interventions to Promote a Healthy and Sustainable Lifestyle (LIVELY) for Childhood Obesity Prevention: Study Protocol (Preprint)

“…In particular, children of migrant background often change for the worse their traditional eating habits while increasing consumption of processed food often because of economic barriers [13,14]. Given that as of January 1, 2020, Italy was counting 1.3 million children of migrant background aged 0-17, it's clear how the imprinting of nutritional and healthy lifestyle education among this population group is determinant to curb childhood obesity prevalence in future years [15].…”