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

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.