Socios externos

4.1. Lone parents: main characteristics

At the first glance, the phenomenon of lone parent families in Italy might seem highly static, untouched by the great trends toward change that have made such families a specific focus of attention in most of the advanced countries in the debate on social policies, in the rediscovery of new poverty, but also in the concern of public opinion with the burden of costs for the welfare system. In fact, if we look at situations such as that of Great Britain, or France, the Italian situation appears practically unchanged. No data exists for the period we have just considered because the first — only numerical — measurement of the phenomenon goes back to the 1981 census, and estimated the number of lone parent families with dependent children as just under 700,000. It is, moreover, highly significant that the measurement was made in the “obliged” context of a European comparison (Menniti and Palomba 1986).

In Italy, in fact, no national survey had described the characteristics of these families until the first experimentation of the “Multiscopo household survey” in 1983. On that occasion, the estimate for the national level was substantially lower, amounting to around 467,000 families. The figure has since been confirmed, with minor fluctuations, by all the successive waves of the Multiscopo (multi-purpose) surveys. The most likely explanation of the discrepancy (Menniti 1991, 188) lies in the greater reliability of the sample survey data, in terms of de facto families, with respect to the census data, which was inflated by the phenomenon of “paper families”.

Only later on, after several waves of Multiscopo survey, was this attention transferred to population data as well, on the occasion of the major census reform in 1991. The figure now gives nearly 357,000 lone mothers with dependent children (Menniti 1999). But even today there is still no data of the trend for the entire population comparable to that of many other European and developed countries, which identify them regularly in population census. This will be the case in the future in Italy, with the 2001 population census, although there will be some problems of comparability with the past.

It is of course possible to draw reasonable conclusions from the estimates of the phenomenon as given by the successive cycles of the Multiscopo survey, which are evidently more homogeneous, with the help of a certain attention to the European picture. While other countries, as well, have only sample data at their disposal, the data in fact refers to trends that are more long-term and generally well-known.

In many other European countries, the numerical increase of lone parent families is due, above all, to the trend towards family break-up, which accounts for most of the growth, together with a marked and rapid increase in the number of unmarried mothers (Martin 1997). Now, if we hypothetically assume a time lag of the phenomenon in Italy and look at the sample figures available for the fifteen years between 1983 and 1998, it seems that practically nothing has changed: the estimate for 1983 was 467,000 and fifteen years later it was 469,000. The immediately available explanation, the one that is usually given, is that divorces and births outside marriage rose far less in Italy than they did elsewhere. This may not be a sufficient explanation, however, since in Italy also the proportion of lone parent families with dependent children with respect to all families with dependent children has increased (from 5.5 to 8.3%), albeit by no means in the same proportion that we have seen elsewhere. The difference in trend thus leads us to imagine that other variables must be involved, one of them inevitably being the fall in the birth rate, but another variable that is not to be underestimated is probably the shifting of the phases of lifetime.

We shall attempt to bring out the Italian specificities by comparing the trends of lone parent families with children of all ages with lone parent families with dependent children. First of all, if we take lone parent families as a whole, the course of the phenomenon appears far more regular. This probably explains the preference of ISTAT for the publication of this data, which is less sensitive to the limitations of representativity of the Multiscopo sample, even if in fact it is not comparable on a European level since it puts together such different phenomena as the cohabitation of children who are themselves almost elderly (with parents who are very old) with the classical typology of lone parents bringing up children on their own. This, surely, is too drastic a solution to the problem of the variation from one country to another in the age limit for dependent children.

Table 24. Sample estimate of lone parent families with dependent children and with children of all ages in Italy

Multiscopo wave Lone parent families % headed by women % of all families with children Lone parents with dependent children % headed by women % of all families with children 1983 1,371,000 85.3 12.8 467,000 86.0 5.5 1988 1,546,000 84.2 14.6 480,000 84.8 6.7 1993-4 1,776,000 84.7 17.9 491,000 84.5 7.2 1998 1,787,000 84.1 18.2 469,000 86.9 8.3

Source: Istat average data of two waves of Multipurpose Survey

We can clearly see that the phenomenon is by no means static: even if we consider all lone parents, we see that their rather slow increase in absolute terms defines an increase that is much sharper in the proportion they represent of all families with children. And this increase becomes all the more significant if we consider that children in general are becoming increasingly rare in Italy. On the other hand, the feminisation of lone parents does not appear to be increasing. With respect to this, the even more gradual growth in absolute terms of the phenomenon that interests us, the “true” lone parent families with

dependent children under 18, reveals however both a constant upward trend with respect to families with dependent children on the whole and a slightly more substantial trend towards the feminisation of the head of the household in recent years. We may thus say that this is due not only to the overall fall in the birth rate but also to internal shifts between age groups.

This is indeed confirmed by the fact that the number of lone mothers with dependent children in the younger age groups has recently tended to fall, as we see in table 25,13 while elsewhere the entire phenomenon of the increase has been explained precisely in terms of cohorts and attributed to the baby boom generation (Ford and Millar 1995), who divorced more and had more children out of wedlock. Thus in Italy there is no increase in the (relatively insubstantial) number of young unmarried mothers, who represent the most controversial part of the phenomenon elsewhere, and the one most in the public eye in the debate on the underclass and on welfare dependency.

Table 25. Sample estimate of lone mothers with dependent children in Italy, by age group Mothers’ age 1983 1994 1998 Under 25 5.4 3.6 25/ 34 22.4 26.3 27.1 35/44 33.1 46.5 47.5 45 and more 39.1 23.6 28.3

Source: Istat average data of two waves of Multipurpose Survey

We note, in the table 25, that the upward trend of nearly 15 percentage points for the 35-44 age group in a sense “tells” a story very similar to the rest of Europe, of an increase in the number of separations and, albeit to a much lesser extent, of divorces. We might even think that it also contains a number of births outside marriage “by choice”, for women of a no longer tender age. According to some experts, we are beginning to see a recognisable increase in this type of births in the more modernised regions of Italy (especially in Northern and Central Italy), linked to a secularised tendency to experience births outside marriage, without a sense of stigmatisation, with the children usually acknowledged by both parents. On the other hand, the marginality of the phenomenon of unmarried mothers regards women who acknowledge their children on their own, are younger, and mainly live in the South (ISTAT 1999a).

The two age groups below and above the 35-44 group display a distinctive trend, which at first seems to move towards European models, with an increase in the number of very young lone mothers and a fall in the number of older ones; but then it sharply reverses. This is probably due to the joint effect of the fall in the birth rate and of the so- called “long family”, the tendency of pre-adult and adult children to postpone the separation from the family of their parents, prolonging the cohabitation well beyond the time when they become jobholders (Piccone Stella 1997; Scabini and Rossi 1997), or, more frequently in recent times, to come back to this cohabitation after a separation or a divorce (Cioni 1997, 221).

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The postponement of marriage and the sharp rise in the mother's age at the birth of her first child (now well over 2814) indicate a shift of many family phenomena, lone parent families included, to later phases in the life course than is the case in other countries or what was the case with previous cohorts in Italy as well. From a comparative standpoint, the aggravating circumstance of the longer divorce procedures does still contribute to raising the age of the subjects involved, but especially that of their children. Moreover, the tendency to avoid or postpone divorce in marriage with children is still important in Italy (Saraceno e Barbagli 1998, 31-32) but not any more to the same extent in other European countries (cf. for instance Andersson 1997).

In fact, as has been amply demonstrated (Fadiga Zanatta 1996), under the apparent immobility of the phenomenon, Italy is also witnessing a fairly rapid transition from the old to the new type of lone parenthood: the same fall in the proportion of widows and the same increase in separated and divorced women among the mothers of dependent children that we have seen in other countries. Thus, for the moment, unmarried mothers may have this dualistic composition that confuses the trend. The postponement of the birth of the first child together with the prolongation of the condition of parenting for children well over the legal age would explain the increased magnitude of the oldest age group: it has in fact been estimated that the “long family” today extends its influence to the over-45 age group (Sabbadini 1999).

Table 26. Sample estimate of lone mothers with dependent children in Italy, by civil status Marital status 1983 1994 1998 Unmarried 12.1 18.6 14.6 Separated/divo rced 46.0 56.7 63.7 Widows 41.9 24.7 21.7

Source: Istat average data of two waves of Multipurpose Survey

Table 27. Sample estimate of lone fathers with dependent children in Italy, by civil status Marital status 1983 1994 1998 Unmarried 0.5 7.9 n.r.15 Separated/divo rced 32.4 53.9 47.6 Widowers 68.1 38.2 31.9

Source: Istat average data of two waves of Multipurpose Survey

We can see that Italy reflects the same trend toward a modernisation of the conditions of lone parenthood, for the most part by free choice (Fadiga Zanatta 1997), that we find in the rest of Europe. It is, if anything, the minority group of lone fathers who maintain a higher proportion of widowers (at the national level 31.9%, but the figure is much higher in the South). This is due to the prevailing practice of giving custody after divorce or separation to the mother of the children and to the extremely low proportion

14

It was 28.1 in 1996, last official national data, but many local measurements show a further increase. 15

of joint custody arrangements (tables 26 and 27). Some comparative cross-sectional measurements, made at a fixed time, still place Italy with the other Mediterranean countries, more towards the extreme of the old lone parenthood, but if we instead look at the data over time we discover that also Italy is moving in the same direction with other European countries.

It is thus certainly not fortuitous that until a few years ago, there were no separate figures for these distinct phenomena in Italy. On the contrary, the first signs of alarm about the exponential increase in the number of unmarried mothers and their dependency on welfare go back to 1974 in Great Britain and to the early 1980s in France; and for the most part they were contained in research reports of public institutions — a clear sign of the social (and moral) alarm that was raised and of the quite different social visibility of the phenomenon.

Moreover, lone mothers of dependent children have always been employed in Italy, much more often than mothers in couple families and they still are, even if we consider lone mothers of children under 12 as in our sample (table 28).

Table 28. Employment of lone mothers and mothers in couple families with dependent children in Italy

1993 1998 Mothers in couple Lone mothers Mothers in couple Lone mothers

Lone mothers with children under12 Employed 41.8 67.6 44.9 65.2 64.2 Housewife 52.0 19.2 47.3 20.8 20.9 Pensioner 1.4 4.0 2.0 5.616 Unemployed + other 4.8 9.2 5.8 8.4 14.9

Source: Istat average data of two waves of Multipurpose Survey

This reasoning, then, by no means leads to the conclusion that lone parent families headed by women are invisible to social policies only because the problem is not quantitatively important or because their condition is less problematic or impoverished than it is elsewhere or because it somehow finds a spontaneous solution in the tissue of relations of civil society. When we speak of the “invisibility” of lone mothers, we allude to a further difficulty of a cultural nature that concerns, for example, also local social services that do actually serve a substantial number of lone parent families (and therefore know their problems, which are however often labelled as those of “multi- problem families”).

Even if it is true that lone mothers with serious problems have a high likelihood of obtaining aid from the social services (Kyllönen 1999), this cultural difficulty renders highly problematic the possibility of describing their situation as a new or emergent type of a social problem and of seeing it as a whole. This is why even the National Commission on Poverty and Social Exclusion, partly also because it uses the measurement with no age limit for dependent children, continues to judge the conditions of lone parent families headed by women as a problem that is not particularly serious (Presidency of the Council of Ministers 2000). However, any micro-data measurement that uses the same criteria for Italy as it does for other countries will show this group to

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be one of the most disadvantaged groups as much in Italy as elsewhere. This occurred more than once with the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data and the same result comes out also from the report of the European Panel on Families (ECHP) (ISTAT 1999a).

In particular, regarding young unmarried lone mothers, it is probable that there is today a sort of double absorption and “normalisation” of their problems that are seen, on the one hand, as generational problems within the culturally prevailing family obligations, given the non-existence of a policy for the family17 and, on the other hand, as structural and very high level of youth unemployment. The situation, moreover, is quite similar in nearly all Mediterranean countries.

It is by no means our intention to affirm that lone mothers in Italy have no protection from the welfare state with good reason, in the sense that they are not really alone and financially disadvantaged. We wish, rather, to emphasise that a sum of blurring factors are working against them, preventing a full individualisation of their right to social welfare.

Today lone parent families are far more often produced by de facto or legal separations than by divorce or “shot-gun” weddings that failed to take place. They are also affected, with far greater impact, by the phenomenon of the “long family”. In Italy, the huge fall in the birth rate is a direct consequence of the longer “waiting period” between adolescence and adulthood and, as such — as a complex subjective interlacement of delays — it also seems to affect the number of births given outside marriage by very young mothers (Table 29).

Table 29. Births by teenage mothers in Italy Mothers under 15

Total Conceptions Abortions Births

1993 649,255 176 161 15

1994 625,894 59 57 2

1995 614,070 264 259 5

Mothers 15-19

Total Conceptions Abortions Births

1993 1,945,477 28,056 12,910 15,146

1994 1,859,313 25,520 12,151 13,366

1995 1,765,984 25,234 11,983 13,359

Source: Istat Yearly Statistical reports on Health

From a strictly statistical point of view, precisely because of the “long family”, a great many young unmarried mothers are still counted as daughters by the census or sample surveys. For this reason, a demographic reconstruction based on births outside marriage rather than on family structures is unquestionably more reliable.

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Even if some important steps in this direction have already been taken, mostly as concerns conciliation of work and family times.

Table 30. Total and out-of-wedlock fertility in different geographical regions of Italy, average 1993-1995

Region Total fertility rate Births out of wedlock (/1000 births) % o.w. births to mothers under 25 North-west 1.06 84 24 North-east 1.03 100 29 Centre 1.06 77 21 South 1.44 44 48 Islands 1.39 76 59 Italy 1.22 74 34

Source: Istat Yearly Statistical reports on Health

As an indirect confirmation of our reading, consider, for example, both the fact that adolescent lone mothers have nearly disappeared (table 29) (in spite of the fact that births out of wedlock have slightly increased)18 and that today there are statistically more unmarried young lone mothers in precisely those areas of Italy where the total fertility rate is slightly higher and the long family is known to be less widespread, i.e., in the South (table 30).

4.2. Child care provision in the two cities of the sample

It is inappropriate to consider child care policies at a national level in Italy. The variations are so significant between the regions and localities that it is necessary to present only the localities in which we realised the inquiry. Our sample of lone mothers has been selected with the aid of a few different services and by snowballing in the two cities of Florence and Bologna, which show a profound disparity in their capacity for coverage in income support benefits for lone mothers. The two cities, moreover, present significant differences in the development of their social and educational services.

Bologna and Florence were in fact deliberately chosen as research contexts because, on the one hand, both belong to the subnational territorial division that is usually called “the third Italy” (referring to a great homogeneity of the models of economic development, history, political orientation and civic culture) but, on the other hand, they have services for lone parent families and a capacity to take into account their problems that are very different. This, indeed, is a further proof of the fact that our sample is in no