1 Foreword: Valeria Solesin was a victim of the 13 November 2015 Paris attacks. An Italian national, sociologist and demographer, she was, at the time of her death, in the last phase of completing her doctoral thesis on contemporary fertility behaviours in Italy and in France, with a focus on the transition from the first to the second child.
2 Enrolled at the Institute of demography of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Idup in French) and funded by a grant from the French family allowance fund (Cnaf in French), Valeria worked at the “Fertility, family, sexuality” research unit of the French institute for demographic studies (Ined). Very active within the Ined group of doctoral students, she was fully involved in the scientific and social life of the institute.
3 In the year following her death, she received many tributes, in various forms, including: a doctoral scholarship in her name; a poster presenting her research at the International association for French-speaking demographers (Aidelf in French) symposium in Strasbourg, and at the Ined doctoral workshop in Paris; a presentation of her research themes at the Italian consulate in Paris and at various conferences; while the 2016 best “young researcher” article award by the Population journal was dedicated to her. These tributes gave us the chance to gather a number of documents produced by Valeria, which we present in this article for the French Journal of Social and Family Policies (RPSF in French).
4 Presenting Valeria Solesin’s research is not easy, since her work was ongoing and therefore not complete. For this article, we made a choice to attempt to not betray her thoughts and ideas. We also avoid presenting any work in progress, which she would not have liked to see disseminated. Thus, this article is solely based on the research she had already presented, using, for the most part, a number of presentations she had made over her last two years, in French, Italian, and English. The material presented here is therefore mainly composed of Valeria’s doctoral research and the teaching materials she had prepared for the classes she taught at Idup [2], to which we add a few contextual elements. The documents used in this article come from Valeria Solesin’s archives, referenced at Ined. Illustrations (graphs, tables, maps) presented here are as close as possible to their original version.
5 To clearly understand the orientations of Valeria’s thesis, some elements of her academic career shoud firstly be recalled. It followed two ambitions: multidisplinarity and an international dimension. Concerning multidisciplinarity, she was trained in sociology, political science as well as in demography, an academic path that was well suited to the multidisciplinary ambitions of her research. She first pursued a French-Italian Bachelor’s degree in political science at the universities of Nantes (2008-2009) and Trento (Bachelor’s degree in “society, politics and European institutions”). She then enrolled in the French school of higher studies in social sciences (EHESS in French) in Paris, and defended a Master’s dissertation in sociology under the supervision of Michel Forsé entitled “What are the Factors that Impact Fertility Projects? A Comparative Study between France and Italy in the Light of the Institutional Context”. In 2013, she joined Idup to follow the “Populations’ Dynamics” research master. Concerning the international dimension of her studies, her student years were marked by several international moves, and by her international curiosity. Coming from Venice, Italy, she spent a semester at the Thetford Mines secondary school in Quebec as early as 2004-2005, then started her higher education in Trento, Italy, before moving to France.
6 True to her multidisciplinary path (at the crossing of demography, sociology and social sciences) and coherent with her international orientation, she began a comparative doctoral thesis on: “One or Two Children? An Analysis of Fertility Determinants in France and in Italy” [3]. Her goal was to better understand the causes behind the low fertility rate in Italy (1.4 child per woman, against 2.0 children per woman in France), by placing at the centre of her questioning the issue of family and work life balance, as well as the issue of public policies.
7 By comparing the situation in France and in Italy, Valeria was more specifically interested in the transition between the first and the second child: although in both countries couples mainly wish to have two children (Régnier-Loilier and Vignoli, 2011), why is the transition from the first to the second child less frequent in Italy? What are the consequences of a first child on the professional and personal lives of women and men? What are the obstacles to having a second child? To what extent do social and family policies influence couples’ decisions? It was about understanding whether cultural changes in society, such as the decline of marriage as the founding rite of the couple and the family and as the transitional stage to adulthood, or the increased participation of women in the labour market, took place differently in France and in Italy, and how they may influence the decisions of couples, or even women, to have or not to have children. By placing this comparative analysis at the centre of her thinking, her research was about questioning the impact of public policies, the labour market, social norms and the social pressure to have children on fertility behaviours, considering the current context while providing historical depth.
8 A rich methodological system, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, served the ambitions of Valéria Solesin’s doctoral thesis. On the one hand, she used statistical methods and demographic analysis, based on various sources: surveys from public statistical systems, population censuses and vital statistics. These sources, traditionally used in demographic analysis, helped her compare the main demographic trends of these two countries, their evolutions, and to point out possible determinants. Valeria had mainly focused on statistical analysis, which this article will review. On the other hand, in complement to her detailed quantitative analyses, she intended to take a comprehensive approach by conducting qualitative in-depth interviews. She had completed a vast fieldwork by interviewing about sixty parents with one or two children, in France and in Italy (about forty parents in the Italian cities of Florence and Naples, and about twenty parents in the French cities of Nantes and Marseille) in order to better understand the actors’ motivations in their family choices and the mechanisms behind them.
France and Italy: Two Very Different Neighbours in Terms of Fertility
9 The baby boom is one of the main demographic events of the last century. During the war, unions and births were postponed due to difficult living conditions, the absence of men who had gone to battle, and the uncertainty of the future. In the aftermath of the war, a catch-up phenomenon occurred, resulting in a rapid and significant increase in birth rates (a phenomenon that lasted until the 1970s). Although it concerned most European countries, the baby boom did not end at the same time in all countries. “In observing the evolution of the total fertility rate (TFR) in France and in Italy since 1950, although stereotypes about Italy are those of very large families, the French fertility has always been higher than the Italian one. However, French fertility started to decrease earlier on” [4], stated Valéria Solesin. Italy is one of the last countries to see its fertility decline, and this decline was stronger until it reached a level significantly lower than in France (graph 1).
Evolution of Fertility from 1950 to 2009 in Germany, France, Sweden and Italy (Total Fertility Rate)
Evolution of Fertility from 1950 to 2009 in Germany, France, Sweden and Italy (Total Fertility Rate)
10 Recent data by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that after a slight rise in Italian fertility between 1995 and 2010, it falls again (1.37 child per woman in 2014), while, in the meantime, a slight recovery can be observed in Germany (1.47 child per woman). In France, fertility remains rather stable between 2000 and 2010, fluctuating between 1.99 and 2.03 children per woman. In 2014, the fertility rate was of 2.01 children per woman, which is significantly higher than the Italian rate. The reasons behind the low Italian fertility are diverse and the comparison that Valeria made with France was from this point of view very enlightening. In her research, several demographic factors account for this particularly low fertility: the proportion of women without children by the end of their child-bearing years, the postponement of the first child due to a late departure from the family household, the specific role of marriage, as well as an analysis of the regional fertility disparities between northern and southern Italy.
Comparison of Trends in the Fertility Calendar in France and Italy
11 Italian fertility has changed significantly in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the total fertility rate presented in graph 1 is a period indicator (the sum of age-specific fertility rates in a given year) [5], graph 2 shows the proportion of women who had had one or two children by different ages, for two generations. Women born during the Second World War, between 1940 and 1944, had children at the end of the baby boom, in the 1960s-1970s. In France, around 60% of these women had at least one child by the age of twenty-five and a little less than 30% had at least two children, against around 45% and 15% respectively in Italy.
Cumulative Proportions of Women Born Between 1940 and 1944 (1960 and 1964) who had a First (Second) Child at a Given Age (France, Italy)
Cumulative Proportions of Women Born Between 1940 and 1944 (1960 and 1964) who had a First (Second) Child at a Given Age (France, Italy)
12 Despite this delay in the arrival of children, already visible for these generations of women, a phenomenon of catch-up took place later on and, by the end of their child-bearing years, French and Italian women were proportionally as many to have had at least one child (nine out of ten) or two children (seven out of ten). However, the situation is very different for women born twenty years later, between 1960 and 1964, after the fertility decline. In both countries, births occur later in life: in France, the proportion of women already mothers at age twenty-five, for example, dropped from 60% for the 1940-1944 generation to a little more than 40% for the 1960-1964 generation. Like the previous generation, Italian women continue to have children later than in France, yet, unlike the 1940-1944 generation, their fertility does not subsequently match that of French women. At age forty-five, at the end of their reproductive years, the proportion of women who only had one child is now larger in Italy (18%) than in France (around 11%). Differences are even stronger concerning the proportion of women who had at least two children, significantly lower in Italy (58%) than in France (73%, or a fifteen points difference).
Age of Departure from the Parental Home and the Importance of Marriage: Explanatory Factors in Calendar Gaps
13 To understand the longer postponement of births in Italy than in France, two interrelated elements can be put forward: the age of departure from the parental home and the prominence of marriage as a key social institution. Graph 3, from Valeria’s presentation at Idup in January 2015, shows a much higher average age of departure from the parental home in Italy compared to France, a gap that has continued to grow over generations. While the average age of departure is stable in France (around twenty-one years old), in Italy, it increased from a little less than twenty-three years old for the 1945-1949 generation to over twenty-four years old for the 1960-1964 generation.
Evolution of the Average Age of Departure from the Parental home (France, Italy)
Evolution of the Average Age of Departure from the Parental home (France, Italy)
14 This stage of the transition to adulthood, significantly delayed in Italy, cannot be separated from the prominence of a traditional family model strongly marked by the importance of marriage. For the generation born in the early 1960s, 66% of first unions in France began with a period of out-of-wedlock cohabitation, whereas in Italy, more than 90% of first unions started with marriage (table 1). Although behaviours change for the youngest generations (Vignoli and Salvini, 2014), this strong difference between the two countries may partly account for the later departure from the parental home in Italy: leaving the parents’ house is only possible through marriage; yet marriage depends on access to independent housing, itself linked to the material situation of the partners in a difficult economic context. Due to the weight of social norms, the birth of a child outside marriage remains rare in Italy, unlike in France: almost six out of ten births took place out of wedlock in France in 2015 (French national institute for statistical and economic studies—Insee) against slightly more than a quarter in Italy (Istituto nazionale di statistica—Istat), which affects the timing of births.
Evolution of the Proportion of First Unions that Started by a Period of Out-of-Wedlock Cohabitation
Evolution of the Proportion of First Unions that Started by a Period of Out-of-Wedlock Cohabitation
The End of Regional Fertility Disparities in Italy?
15 The delayed entry into parenthood is one of the demographic elements Valéria Solesin put forward to explain the low fertility rate in Italy. Another way to highlight the postponement of births is to show the evolution of the fertility rate by age. Graph 4 and map 1 are part of a poster (annex at the end of the article) entitled “Regional Fertility Disparities in Italy: Can We Speak of an Italian Fertility?” for which she won, in 2014, the third prize of the scientific poster competition of the University of Paris 1 (she also presented this poster in Italian at the “Giornate di studio sulla popolazione” (PopDays) in Palermo in February 2015). This kind of research is part of a tradition by Italian demographers, which suggests the existence of “two demographic Italies” in terms of fertility (Santini, 1995; De Rose and Strozza, 2015).
Evolution of Fertility Rates by Age in Italy from 1972 to 2012 (by Major Region)
Evolution of Fertility Rates by Age in Italy from 1972 to 2012 (by Major Region)
Total Fertility Rate in Italian Regions from 1992 to 2012
Total Fertility Rate in Italian Regions from 1992 to 2012
16 Graph 4 shows that the most frequent age (or “modal age”) to have children (all birth orders included) increased from twenty-six years old in 1972 to thirty-two years old in 2012. However, another interesting characteristic of Italian fertility, regional gaps between the North and the South, have almost disappeared. In 1972, the number of births was higher at older ages in the southern regions compared to the Centre and the North. In 1992, fertility rates remained higher at younger ages in the South, while they decreased at older ages as large families became rare. In the North and in the Centre, fertility became more spread due to delayed births, however they also affected the South, and in 2012, regional disparities disappeared, both in terms of birth timing and fertility intensity (map 1). Although in the 1990s southern regions had the highest fertility rates, they have decreased from 1992 to 2012, while they increased in the North-East and Lazio regions.
Very Different Sociopolitical Contexts
Important Gaps in Women’s Participation to the Labour Market
17 The demographic situation in France and in Italy cannot be separated from the sociodemographic context. Valéria Solesin’s research bore the mark of her training in sociology and political science, and placed the issue of social norms and policies at the centre of the discussion. They impact the roles assigned to women and men and may direct or influence the formation of couples and family. Here again, the comparison between Italy and France is relevant in many ways. First, women’s participation to the labour market has strongly increased in Europe over the past decades, yet important gaps remain. In particular, OECD data from 2010 shows that in France 83% of women between twenty-five and fifty-four years old are working, against only 63% in Italy. “These differences come together as a result of an instrumental vision of female activity which has dominated in Italy since the post-war years. The female workforce has always been considered as a secondary or reserve labour force in comparison to male activity (Maruani and Meron, 2012; Saraceno, 2003)” [6]. This conception of labour goes hand in hand with the traditional family model in which the man supports the family and where the woman takes care of the family and children. Women’s ability to choose whether they want to work or not is a key factor in family models. In the 1960s and 1970s, the idea was that the traditional family model would remain associated with high fertility and that, conversely, female activity was hardly compatible with a high birth rate. In fact, contemporary trends show higher fertility rates in countries where the female employment rate is high. Thus, women’s ability to reconcile work and family life appears to be a determining factor of fertility in Europe. OECD data from 2010 shows that in countries where fertility is the highest, women participate massively in the labour market: the employment rate of women between twenty-four and fifty-four years old is of 83% in France, 84% in Finland, 86% in Denmark and 87% in Sweden, proportions barely lower than those of men. In southern, more traditional, countries, women’s employment rate is only of 64% in Italy, 72% in Greece and 78% in Spain.
Different Conceptions of the Family
18 Some sociologists explain that there is a strong diversity in the ways of “making family” (Morgan, 2003). Nothing is obvious or natural about family and fertility choices. Sociologists, like R. Rindfuss (2004), thus designate by “family package” the set of standard social and family role attitudes. This “package” can be very rigid, mainly for women, with a strong pressure to fit into well-defined roles: being married, accepting the patriarchal norm to some extent, having children and stop working after their birth, taking care of in-laws. This is the situation in southern European countries, including in Italy. In France, this “package” seems more flexible: women can have children out of wedlock and may continue to work. Different family formats are better accepted, such as, for instance, out-of-wedlock births, single parent or reconstituted families. Social norms play an important role. The results of the European Social Survey highlight, for instance, wide discrepancies in the perception of female employment. In France, women with young children who continue to work are not perceived as bad mothers. Unlike Italy, one can be a “good mother” even when working full time and when children are in day care. Graph 5 shows examples of differences in perception between France and Italy. It presents the proportions of people who believe that a preschool-aged child is at risk of suffering from the fact that his/her mother is working. Three quarters of Italians agree with this statement, without any significant difference between women and men. However, in France, only one third of women and just under half of men share this view.
Views (Agree—Disagree) about the Statement “A preschool-aged child is at risk of suffering from the fact that the mother is working”
Views (Agree—Disagree) about the Statement “A preschool-aged child is at risk of suffering from the fact that the mother is working”
19 Similarly, graph 6 shows significant differences between the two countries in the proportion of women and men who feel that fathers can educate their children as well as mothers. In Italy, almost 30% of men and women disagree with this statement, against barely 10% in France.
Views (Agree—Disagree) about the Statement “In general, fathers can raise their children as well as mothers”
Views (Agree—Disagree) about the Statement “In general, fathers can raise their children as well as mothers”
A Limited Italian Family Policy
20 Beyond the issue of norms and representations, Valéria Solesin’s thesis includes another foundational element: the study of the impact of public policies on fertility behaviours. Here again, the comparison between France and Italy is relevant. “In France, family policy is generous to families. It includes both money transfers to families, with the objective of offsetting the cost of children, the introduction of measures to promote reconciliation between family life and work, such as child care centres, or the possibility to take a well-compensated parental leave (Damon, 2008). On the contrary, the Italian family policy is very limited. The majority of measures aimed at families are assistance measures and have the main objective of fighting poverty rather than compensating the direct cost of the child or offering day care centres for young children (Saraceno, 2003)” [7].
21 Graph 7 presents the share of the gross domestic product (GDP) dedicated to social protection in 2011 in various European countries. This share is slightly higher in France (34%) than in Italy (30%), yet the contrast is not that important and the two countries are above the European average. However, these similarities hide important differences between the two countries. Spendings directly allocated to families are significantly lower in Italy (only 2% of GDP against 3.6% in France, graph 8), both for financial transfers and for services to families. Eventually, “almost 60% of social protection resources are dedicated to the financing of the benefits of “old age-survival” risk, against 46% in France” [8]. In France and in Scandinavian countries, generous social policies help families whereas spendings are far lesser in the southern part of Europe, such as in Italy, Portugal or Greece. These differences are due to cultural factors. In Italy, the prevailing idea is that the State must not interfere in the family sphere, whereas in France, the intervention of the State in the private sphere is more widely accepted, in particular when it concerns the education of children. Financial incentives, such as the maternity leave or tax benefits, are at the centre of family policies in many other countries. They are often preferred because they are simpler to implement. However, many studies have demonstrated that financial support alone has in fact a limited impact on fertility (Luci-Greulich and Thévenon, 2013). The specificity of countries with a strong fertility rate, such as France and Scandinavian countries, is the presence of a developed network of child care facilities, which enables parents to reconcile family and working life, with an idea of “service guarantee”, unlike countries with a low fertility rate like Italy.
Share of the Gross Domestic Product Dedicated to Social Protection in Europe (2011)
Share of the Gross Domestic Product Dedicated to Social Protection in Europe (2011)
Early Child Care Arrangements: Between Formal and Informal Support
22 The supply of public services to families is very different in France and Italy (graph 9). In Italy, although the number of nursery places is on the rise, early child care is still largely dependent on intergenerational family solidarity. Informal support, delivered by grandparents, is key: 53% of children under three years old are looked after this way when mothers work. This is due, on the one hand, to the supply of children’s day care centres being limited, since only 55% of Italian cities offer this service. In 2012, only 13% of children under three years old attended a day care centre (Istat, 2015). Thus, when a day care centre is used, it is usually a private structure. On the other hand:
“Unlike France, an educational role is given to Italian grandparents, especially grandmothers: they would indeed be able to raise children and make them grow in the best possible environment:
- “For the child, besides the babysitter’s economic savings, being with grandparents is another thing. This is a specific Italian mode of operation but me, I prefer it. When my daughter is sick, I know she is with my mother; sick, but with my mother. The babysitter perhaps doesn’t have the same experience… Me, before leaving my sick child… how to put it…”.
In France, on the contrary, the use of more formal day care services is much more frequent: mainly day care centres and childminders (graph 9) [10]. “In France, public day care centres enjoy a broad legitimacy and are considered a place of awakening and learning for children (Brachet et al., 2010)” [11].[In addition], […] the need to resort to family solidarity is also expressed because the high cost of day care centres deprives families of part of the household budget:
- “Between grandpa and day care, in the end, we choose grandpa because he is for free!”
Share of the Gross National Product for Families and Allocation of Expenses (2011)
Share of the Gross National Product for Families and Allocation of Expenses (2011)
Early Child Care Arrangements in France and in Italy
Early Child Care Arrangements in France and in Italy
A Key Issue: The Link Between Family and Work Life
23 Starting from the observation that “France has an employment rate higher than the European average, around 65% in 2010 whereas in Italy it is one of the lowest […] around 50%” [12], Valéria Solesin put the issue of the conciliation between family and work at the centre of her Ph.D thesis, with the idea of identifying the levers and obstacles to the birth of children. In Italy, reconciling work and family life is difficult, as mentioned earlier in this article, because of social norms (unmarried couples remain a minority due to the weight of traditions, among other things, and this results in the late departure from the parental home), representations (fear that children will suffer because their mother is working) and public policies (day care centres for young children are limited). Thus, despite a fundamental movement to encourage women to work (women’s desire to empowerment, the need to have two salaries in a tight economic context, the political will in Europe to favour women’s labour through the “European employment strategy”), a number of constraints remain. This results in the women’s employment rate being lower in Italy than in France, whatever the number of children (table 2). Among mothers with two children, 77% work in France, while only 54% of them work in Italy. The withdrawal from the labour market, measured by the probability of “leaving or losing” [13] a job, is common, whatever the birth order and region (around 15%).
Female and Male Employment Rate (25-49 years old) According to the Number of Children
Female and Male Employment Rate (25-49 years old) According to the Number of Children
24 There is, however, an important difference in the southern regions of Italy, which are characterised by a significantly higher decline in activity (almost 30%) from the birth of the first child (graph 10). If the level of education is strongly correlated with the career path, with a clearly higher probability to stop working for the least educated women, the impact is particularly strong in the southern regions: the probability to stop working after the birth of the first child for the least educated women is around ten points higher in the South (37%) than in the North (28%) (graph 11).
Probability of Leaving or Losing Employment After a Birth in Italy, by Birth Order and Region
Probability of Leaving or Losing Employment After a Birth in Italy, by Birth Order and Region
Probability of Leaving or Losing Employment After a Birth in Italy, by Level of Education and Region
Probability of Leaving or Losing Employment After a Birth in Italy, by Level of Education and Region
Conclusion
25 Valéria Solesin was finalising the analysis of her interviews when she was a victim of the Paris attacks. She was starting her writing work and was therefore unable to mature, through the writing of her thesis, her conclusions in response to the many questions her research addresses.
26 Her first results showed the complexity of fertility choices and how they may be impacted by constraints constructed at the crossroads of individual stories and family, professional, social and political context. The fertility decline in Italy, until a level much lower than the French one, contrasts with the standardisation of behaviours within each of these two countries. Family structures are more conservative in Italy, particularly in the southern regions, which results in a low fertility rate often perceived both as a source of demographic imbalance and as a symptom of social and family imbalance. On the contrary, the high fertility rate in France is associated with a peaceful vision of family change. The term-to-term comparison between the two countries makes it possible to minimise this opposition, while emphasising the many differences between them, in terms of social policies, norms and representations, as well as the contrasts between social groups.
27 One of the central themes of Valeria’s thesis was the practical conditions for reconciling family and work, as well as the policies supporting this conciliation. The first analysis of her qualitative interviews shows that the practical difficulties of combining work and the organisation of young children’s lives are revealed in the experiences and choices of women when deciding to have a second child. Women’s professional activity appears as a financial necessity to many couples, it also contributes to reducing gender inequalities, provided that it is associated with a more egalitarian distribution of family and parental tasks that makes the presence of young children and exercise of a professional activity compatible for both parents. It is under this condition that couples will be able to choose to have several children, as shown in comparative studies conducted in many countries (Rindfuss et al., 2015). The answers to the questions asked by Valéria Solesin will help keep her memory alive.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Giulia Ferrari and Giancarlo Camarda for their help in the translation of Valeria Solesin’s articles and research work written in Italian, as well as for their proofreading. Thank you also to Daniele Vignoli for his proofreading and to Alessandra Pili (Ined’s documentation services) for preparing Valeria’s archives, in which we found the material useful for the writing of this article. Finally, we thank Andrea Cavallari, Consul General of Italy in Paris from 2012 to the end of 2016, whose support for various initiatives in tribute to Valeria prompted us to restore her work and write this text.Poster presented at the Demographic institute research centre of the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in 2014 and then, in Italian, at the «Giornate di studio sulla popolazione» (PopDays) in Palermo, in February 2015
Notes
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[1]
The original version of this article was published in French in the n°124 issue of the RPSF journal, https://www.persee.fr/doc/caf_2431-4501_2017_num_124_1_3207?q=o%09Panico+Lidia,+Régnier-Loilier+Arnaud+et+Toulemon+Laurent,+%22Fécondité+et+politiques+publiques.+Une+comparaison+ entre+la+France+et+l’Italie+autour+des+travaux+de+Valeria+Solesin%22 (accessed 2 October 2021).
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[2]
Valeria was a temporary teaching and research officer (Ater in French) at the Demographic institute research centre of the University of Paris 1 (Cridup in French) for the 2015-2016 academic year.
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[3]
Under the supervision of first Alexandre Avdeev and then Virginie de Luca Barrusse (Idup), her doctoral thesis was supported by the French family allowance fund (Cnaf in French) under the supervision of Benoît Céroux. Valeria joined Ined under the supervision of Arnaud Régnier-Loilier.
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[4]
Valéria Solesin’s oral presentation on 28 January 2014 at the Cnaf’s research and foresight commission.
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[5]
It can be interpreted as the average number of children a woman would have if she experienced, throughout her child-bearing years, the same fertility conditions observed that particular year.
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[6]
Excerpt from Asimmetrie fuori e dentro il mercato del lavoro. Una comparazione tra Francia e Italia sui ruoli di genere e l’attività professionale, presented at the 2014 “Districare il nodo genere-potere. Sguardi interdisciplinari su politica, lavoro, sessualità e cultura” symposium, University of Trento, Italy.
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[7]
Ibid.
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[8]
Excerpt from a first draft of Valéria Solesin’s thesis chapter entitled “Family Policies in France and in Italy: Similarities and Differences”.
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[9]
Excerpt from a first draft of Valéria Solesin’s thesis chapter entitled “Early Childhood Services: A Key Element in Family Policy”.
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[10]
Note that the graph’s range is not the same for France and for Italy: In France, it includes all children, including those whose mother does not work.
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[11]
Excerpt from a first draft of Valéria Solesin’s thesis chapter entitled “Family Policies in France and in Italy: Similarities and Differences”.
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[12]
Valéria Solesin’s oral presentation on 28 January 2014 at the Cnaf’s Research and foresight commission.
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[13]
Valéria Solesin put forward that the withdrawal from the labour market was not always a choice, but was also the consequence of frequent unfair behaviours on the part of employers towards mothers, a situation highlighted in her interviews. In the first draft of one of her thesis chapters, she presented the case of a mother of two children, working at night, who had requested, as provided for by law, an adjustment of her schedule at each of her births: “I was clearly told, “don’t think you will get a promotion!” When promotions took place, I was excluded from them. They were very straightforward with me.” (Couple 7, mother of two children, 42 years old, Florence)
