Grandparents providing childcare in Italy

Aim: research on childcare arrangements choices in Italy tends to agree on the fundamental role of grandparents in providing informal childcare. In such a context, we are interested in understanding how grandparents provide childcare, especially in terms of differences in their socio-economic, demographic and physical status jointly with the characteristics of grandchildren. Methods: we selected from the 2009 Italian Multiscopo Family and Social Subjects survey grandparents older than 50 years with at least one not co-resident grandchild aged less than 14 years. We performed a Multinomial Logistic Regression model jointly for both sexes and two separate ones in order to identify the determinants of the probability of providing childcare intensively, occasionally or during the holidays rather than never. Results: grandparents who have severe long limiting illness (LLI), being less educated, with not adequate economic resources and older are significantly less likely to provide childcare, independently by care arrangements. In addition, great residential distance of grandchild and, for grandfathers and the total sample, being employed and married are negatively associated with the occasional and intensive childcare. Moreover, living in South of Italy, lower number of young grandchildren, being married and, for grandmothers and the total sample, age of grandchild less than one year and age of grandparents less than 60 years or greater than 64 years are significantly negatively associated with only intensive childcare. Finally, grandparents are more likely to provide childcare during the holidays if the grandchild lives more than 16 kilometres far, if they are married and, among males, when they are aged between 65 and 74 years. Conclusions: our results confirm the fundamental importance of grandparents in providing informal childcare in Italy and they provide useful information to understand the individual characteristics associated with different types of childcare arrangements