At last, someone is starting to talk about it.
At last, people are beginning to realize that our school system, childcare infrastructure and, in my opinion, even the way employment is regulated, are simply not designed to support a healthy balance between parenthood and work.
I’m certainly not an expert. I’m just a working mother who, after nine years of anxiety, logistical acrobatics and silent prayers to Ceres, has reached a rather bitter conclusion:
In Italy, if you want children, you either need money or grandparents.
Available grandparents.
Young enough to help, but not too young.
They need to be retired, because what you really need is their time.
And yet, in Italy, people tend to have children later in life. First comes the job—preferably a stable one. Then a home, perhaps a mortgage, or, if you’re lucky, some support from family wealth or inheritance.
So what often happens is this: two people in their thirties, both earning fairly average salaries, decide to “start a family.” Italian wages have recently been reported to be growing more slowly than inflation, reducing purchasing power. As a result, both incomes are essential simply to stay afloat.
And then you find yourself in a story like this.
Two people in their thirties decide to take the plunge.
They try not to dwell on the horror stories told by friends who have already been through the experience. They choose courage. They approach parenthood with awareness and a touch of recklessness—because otherwise they might never do it at all.
They know they can’t rely much on grandparents, either because they’re too old or because they live too far away. But they do have a trusted babysitter.
And one positive thing the pandemic left behind was a somewhat more modern approach to work, with the occasional remote-working day.
There’s also a private school. Good education, but more importantly, additional services such as early drop-off, after-school care and extended hours.
(Yes, those are actual things.)
Choices have to be made, and slowing down isn’t really an option. Both salaries are needed. Full salaries. Full-time salaries.
And then there’s retirement to think about. It’s uncertain enough already. Cutting contributions doesn’t seem like a wise move. So they keep going.
Then summer arrives.
Summer is a kind of Russian roulette made of summer camps, calendars and financial hemorrhaging.But as long as everything works, you put up with it.
Fewer holidays.
Fewer dinners out.
Less of a social life.
The important thing is to keep showing up to work. Nine to five—well, not really. In Italy we’re often still required to take a lunch break of at least an hour, whether it makes sense or not.
Then something that looks like progress appears on the horizon.
Some regions finally decide to follow the example of other countries and cultures.
Public schools will reopen two weeks earlier. Our exhausted thirty-something parents think:
“Good for them. At least we still have summer camp.”
Then, just as the holidays are drawing to a close, the phone rings.
“We’re sorry, but we’re forced to cancel the second week of summer camp. Since schools are reopening earlier, only two children enrolled—and one of them is yours. We hope you’ll have enough time to make other arrangements.”
Panic.
Or rather, despair.
After all the planning, all the sacrifices, all the effort to stay ahead of things, these parents—toward whom we now feel a strange mix of affection and sympathy—find themselves dealing with yet another unexpected problem.
Another emergency. Another wave of anxiety. And another encounter with guilt. Lots of guilt.
Because at some point, you start feeling as though your child is something you need to move around from place to place. A package. A piece of furniture.
“I’ll leave you here and hope you’ll be okay.”
But is this really what being a parent is supposed to be?
Living with the constant anxiety of organizing everything?
Trying to be everywhere, all the time, while remaining endlessly productive?
Longing to slow down but never being able to?
Trying to be present without ever feeling truly at ease?
And then asking yourself:
“Is it just us?”
Because everyone else seems perfectly capable of managing afternoon sports, lunchtime school pick-ups and all the other impossible logistics of modern parenting.
In fact, they often seem to be coping much better than those of us performing daily acrobatics just to keep everything standing.
Sometimes I wonder whether, in a modern democratic country, it might even make sense to pay parents more—provided that the extra income is invested in raising their children.
But perhaps that wouldn’t be very democratic.
Perhaps it would be unfair to those who don’t have children or cannot have them.
So maybe the answer is simpler.
Maybe we should focus on making life easier for parents—and, more broadly, for anyone who works. We’re still tied to time clocks. Still tied to eight-hour days. Still tied to long mandatory lunch breaks. Still tied to a culture of physical presence.
Really? In 2026?
Where are we heading if having children means giving up your quality of life and your mental health?
Probably straight toward extinction.
A particular song kept playing in my head while I was writing this.
Music never arrives by chance.
By Cinzia Costi
