Father’s children generation

This article is published in issue 30-31 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until August 3, 2021

“The pandemic gave me the greatest gift: it allowed me to stay at home next to my newborn baby.” Paolo Corolli, 48, became Lavinia’s father in March 2020 and, although aware of the horror that raged in the Milan where he lives at that time, he can’t help but be grateful: “I added a week’s leave to the 10 days of leave. holidays. After that I continued to work remotely.

In the early days, my wife Maria Luisa was busy breastfeeding on demand and I took care of everything else. I was even better at changing diapers “, he says with that touch of pride that makes the image of his father refusing to push the stroller prehistoric because” it’s for women “.

Even in Aldo Di Bisceglie, 36, the arrival of Domenico in January 2020 broadened horizons: “As soon as I was able, I started smart working and, living hour after hour next to my son, I understood the extreme effort to which a woman is subjected on her return from the hospital. You come face to face with a creature to discover: at first you don’t know how it reacts, you don’t know how to calm it down, you don’t know anything. Beyond the infinite joy, you go through phases of anxiety, of fatigue. We struggled in two, I don’t dare to imagine how my wife would have done alone ».

The good news is that, perhaps, fewer and fewer wives, partners or companions may find themselves facing those first intense months of fatigue and wonder. Senators Pd Tommaso Nannicini and Valeria Fedeli have just deposited a bill in the courtroom (Nannicini-Fedeli bill) aimed at creating a “culture of sharing”. Former education minister Fedeli explains: «We are proposing a real paradigm shift that aims to enhance the very important role of fathers and to free working mothers from the cage of home-work reconciliation. Cage because it implies that the care of homes, children and elderly parents is their exclusive prerogative ».

The data confirm: an Ipsos research finds that, in Italy, 74 percent of women carry the entire burden of family management on their shoulders. In concrete terms, the bill proposes the equalization of leave. Today it is mandatory only for mothers and is paid for five months at 80 percent. Fathers enjoy just 10 optional days (less than the 15 scheduled for the wedding). If the bill passed, both parents, regardless of contractual or professional condition, would benefit from five compulsory months paid 100 percent. Six months of voluntary leave are then provided for both the mother and the father, up to the age of 14 of the child (today up to 12), with increased allowances. And again: facilitated part-time and agile work. Estimated cost of the operation: 4 billion. “It is an investment in the new generations, in line with the conditionality clause of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which guarantees greater funding for the realities that favor female and youth employment,” explains Fedeli.

First hypothetical benefit: end of the so-called “child penalty», Or rather the drastic downsizing of the career and salaries of workers returning from maternity leave. In 2020, Istat calculated that one in three women leave their jobs after the birth of a child and almost one in four stops working for family reasons, against 2.9 percent of men. Unfortunately, many of these dropouts are anything but voluntary. Elisa Bannò, from Nicosia (in the province of Enna), says: «When I got pregnant, the company I worked for did not renew my contract. They dismissed me with “now you have more important things to think about”. Two weeks later, they hired a man. ‘ Her story recalls that of a thousand other working mothers penalized in a thousand different ways, precisely as mothers.

All the stories of inclusion are alike, each story of discrimination is uncivilized in its own way. Sometimes, then, even cruel. This is the case of Alberta Bini, to whom the former boss took away the greeting from the moment in which she announced that she was expecting a baby. Or Marina Zacco Pancari who, having had a child, couldn’t wait to go back to the office but, upon returning, was put on layoffs to favor a colleague with a VAT number. Or of Valentina Cappelluti, who is consumed with tears since, after maternity, she was demoted from administrative employee to cashier. Not to mention the many, too many, cases of at least inconvenient (if not even damaging to privacy) questions during the interview: “Miss, are you married? Do you have children? Do you think you want some in the next few years? ».

“The problem is that, still in 2021, many companies see motherhood as a cost and not as an investment,” said Senator Fedeli. «They are wrong: motherhood has the value of a university master’s degree. And now paternity must become so too ». Another probable benefit of this “sharing revolution”: a desirable barrier to the demographic winter. In 2020, in Italy, despite the various lockdowns that forced couples and families to be close, the births were just 404,000, 16,000 fewer than in 2019, 30 percent less than in 2018.

The exclusion of the father from the birth rate does not help. “What society still struggles to understand is that the arrival of a child is not the woman’s business, but the couple’s business,” explains Giulia Mazzarini, family psychotherapist expert in perinatality. «In the mom-dad-child triad, everyone must be able to find their own role. If that of the mother is feeding the son, of food and love, that one
of the father is to protect the mother-child duo and act as a filter with the outside world. In short, the father acts as a container that, like a larger matryoshka, guards the other two. Even today, however, men are kept out: no one prepares them to become fathers. We exclude them and then we blame them for non-compliance. While biology says the opposite: scientific studies show that even fathers, if involved in nursing, secrete oxytocin, the so-called love hormone, until recently considered to be the exclusive prerogative of the mother. Not only that: the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotions, is activated in equal measure in the two parents who take care of the newborn. It is therefore important to stop diminishing paternal caring skills and to start involving fathers from the first moment ».

Andrea Corona, 41, confirms: his wife Benedetta gave birth to Federico at the end of January 2020, but had to wait for the start of the lockdown for her husband to start working remotely. He says: “In the first few weeks, when I was in the office all day, there was a kind of tension between my wife and me. I had no idea what was happening within the walls of the house and in the evening, returning home, I felt unprepared, at fault, perhaps a little excluded. Since I started smart working, however, the couple’s relationship has improved. Benedetta and I have become allies, accomplices: if she gave the bottle, I prepared the bath, if she changed the diaper, it was my turn to fall asleep. Today I know how to do everything, Federico feels it, he trusts me as well as his mother. We welcome a law that allows us to pass from a culture of motherhood to one of parenthood ».

Paola Mascaro, president of Valore D, the first association of companies in Italy committed to gender balance, could not agree more: “To make us give up the bad habit of driving without a belt, years ago it took a rule . Today we need another which, by changing the dynamics of the couple, undermines a rooted mechanism such as patriarchal culture. And free everyone, women and men. The Nannicini-Fedeli bill would allow mothers who wish it to be fulfilled at work, companies not to lose the invaluable potential of those who feel forced to give up their careers to fulfill family duties, and fathers to free themselves from the stereotype of the “Alpha male who must never ask “. Men too can, indeed must, ask to be close to their children if they so wish. Research by Valore D, on the other hand, shows that 31 percent believe that a small child needs a mother more. And so we step aside ».

In the bank branch where Matteo Boldrini, 37, in Chiari (province of Brescia) works, things are even worse: an internal survey revealed that only 1 percent of new fathers have requested one of the three days of leave granted from the bank. He, Matteo, is an exception: married to a university researcher who was able to take advantage of only five months of compulsory maternity leave, he took four months of parental leave (optional and paid at 30 percent) as well as two hours a day of breastfeeding until completion of the first year of their daughter, Anita. In this way he allowed Giulia, his wife, to return to work in total tranquility. And to himself to cultivate a special relationship with his daughter, who today considers him his number one accomplice. However, there was a price to pay: «When I announced that I would take my leave, my manager made me understand that my presence in that office was no longer welcome. Upon returning, I was transferred to another department. Never mind, my wife’s serenity and my daughter’s smile are worth ten, a hundred, a thousand promotions ».

And so, in Matteo’s words, the warning of the French psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto echoes, according to which “the father’s task is to make the mother happy, who made him the father of that child”.

PS Notice to the reader: in this article we talk about “mother” and “father” to facilitate the immediacy of understanding. But everything written is valid, in equal measure, for homogenitorial families.

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