Who cares for me? Grandparents, nannies and babysitters caring for children in contemporary Italy.

Abstract

This paper illustrates the factors and features of the revival of paid care and domestic work in Italy. While Italy is experiencing a boom in the recourse to carers for the elderly, there is not a corresponding expansion in paid private childcare, in spite of growing female employment and limited public services for children. One of the reasons for this is the growing involvement of grandparents in childcare. In Italy, a country characterised by a “Mediterranean welfare regime”, people also have recourse to their own mothers (and fathers) to care for their children, in spite of the fact that they can afford to pay for childminding and babysitting. Thus it is not only (migrant) domestic workers who frequently rely on their parents to care for their own children, an issue widely discussed in the literature on global care chains. Their employers, too, may rely on them. Grandparents, however, have turned out to play an important role in childcare not only in Italy but also in Western countries with better childcare services. Focusing on these issues, the paper contributes both to the debate on global care chains and to that on the role of the family within different welfare systems.