Grandparents providing childcare in Italy

Jessica Zamberletti, Giulia Cavrini and Cecilia Tomassini ()
Additional contact information
Jessica Zamberletti: Free University of Bolzano/Bozen
Giulia Cavrini: Free University of Bolzano/Bozen
Cecilia Tomassini: Università degli Studi del Molise

European Journal of Ageing, 2018, vol. 15, issue 3, No 5, 265-275

Abstract: Abstract Research on the choices of childcare arrangements in Italy shows the fundamental role of grandparents in providing informal childcare. Therefore, it is important to understand how grandparents provide different types of childcare, especially in terms of differences in their socio-economic, demographic and physical status, jointly with the characteristics of their grandchildren. Grandparents aged 50 and over with at least one non-co-resident grandchild aged 13 years or less were selected from the 2009 Italian household survey. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression models for grandmothers and grandfathers were used to identify the determinants of the probability of providing childcare intensively, occasionally or during school holidays rather than never. The probability of a grandparent providing intensive childcare is significantly reduced by being: male, unmarried, in bad health and with inadequate economic resources. Nevertheless, when analysing the probability of providing childcare occasionally or during holidays, the individual characteristics of grandparents and grandchildren are less significant compared to intensive childcare, meaning that grandparents provide non-intensive care regardless of their individual characteristics, and this is particularly true for grandmothers. Results confirm the fundamental importance of grandparents in providing informal childcare in Italy, and they offer useful information to understand the individual characteristics associated with different types of grandparental childcare.

Keywords: Grandparenthood; Grandparenting; Care provision (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10433-018-0479-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:eujoag:v:15:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s10433-018-0479-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer ... iences/journal/10433

DOI: 10.1007/s10433-018-0479-y

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Ageing is currently edited by Marja Aartsen, Susanne Iwarsson and Prof. Dr. Matthias Kliegel

More articles in European Journal of Ageing from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().