The last generation raised by mothers

The birth was so complicated that the doctors feared for my mother's life, and for mine as well. Having survived that ordeal without too many lasting effects, and while I was still very little, bad luck struck when I contracted a serious lung disease. That time, too, I was saved by the skin of my teeth because my mother summoned the doctor, who was at home in his dressing gown and slippers, on a Sunday night. That scare turned me into a pale, scrawny, and listless child. I would only eat if I was told a story while I ate. My mother took care of both with biblical patience. The situation dragged on for so long that she ended up recording cassette tapes with stories she told herself—many of them her own creations—so that, whenever it was time for a meal, my mother could use a cassette player we had, a big, black one with keys like a player piano, and give me the story along with the spoonfuls of food.

These distant adventures aim to illustrate, with a brief stroke, the kind of childhood I had, and that many members of my generation, those born in the 1960s, shared. It was a childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood with two very prominent figures: our mothers. That generation was perhaps the last—things work differently in my children's generation—raised by mothers who were always there. Mothers who, generally speaking, didn't work outside the home, but rather dedicated themselves full-time to the children and the household. I had heard about this rather unfair situation, which, in our family, was caused more by tradition and social pressure than by my father, and I had heard my mother speak of it. She, an intelligent and very active woman, sometimes said she felt like a caged snail.

Of that stifling work my mother and the vast majority of women endured, the children of my generation were the unwitting beneficiaries. In my family's case, for example, we never hired a nanny or babysitter. At most, I'd spend an afternoon with my grandmother, who lived next door, right next door, or at the lively house of my cousins, of whom there are eight siblings. The extracurricular activities I attended during childhood and adolescence were exclusively those I requested. And it was my mother who, when I was younger, drove me to and from school in her Fiat 600. I only stayed for lunch at school if absolutely necessary.

Since then, things have changed a lot. Women have entered the workforce, in the sense of working outside the home. Men, for their part, haven't stopped doing what they used to do, so today in many families both work full-time. Simple arithmetic tells us that, under these circumstances, fewer hours can be dedicated to children than in the time when I was a child. The big oversight was that men continued working eight hours a day when women entered the workforce en masse. If families used to work eight hours a day (the hours usually worked by the father), families now worked sixteen hours a day, that is, eight hours for him and eight hours for her. Looking back, the most desirable thing would have been for families to continue dedicating a total of eight hours a day to work. Four and four, for example. Or whatever combination they chose. The way it has been done, the most clearly favored have been the business owners and their economy, who saw how the number of workers and the working hours at their disposal multiplied.

The current and distressing crisis of the family and education, with its corollary of psychological problems in adolescents and young adults—a veritable pandemic—the erosion of fundamental values, the abysmal decline in educational standards, the dependence on screens—and the addictions and risks that follow—the use of these activities... these are the monumental challenges we face and that cause us so much suffering. Many of these problems, I dare say, would occur with far less severity—at least—if more time could be dedicated to children. Returning, compensating, families for that lost, usurped time should become an obsession for 21st-century societies.