Diventare genitori in tempi di crisi: verso una ritradizionalizzazione dei ruoli di genere?

Working from a doing gender perspective (West and Zimmerman 1987), and a life course perspective (Elder, 1995; Mayer, 2001), this paper examines the strategies for reconciling paid work and childcare planned by dual earner couples in their first transition to parenthood, in a period of economic crisis. It stems from a longitudinal qualitative study (part of an international comparative project) that reconstructs the first transition to parenthood of 28 Italian working couples, living in Northern Italy. The empirical material the study is based on is composed of 56 in-depth interviews carried out with couples in 2010-2013, at a particular period in time, when many countries are experiencing the consequences of the economic crisis caused by the collapse of the financial institutions. Our findings show ambivalences: on one hand, the strategies for reconciling paid work and childcare planned by the majority of our couples are characterised by a traditional, unequal gender division of childcare and paid work between the partners. Some respondents explicitly refer to the economic crisis to justify the traditional and unequal gender division of work outside and inside the home planned for the near future (some fathers, for example, talk about their decision or plan not to take parental leave); on the other hand, the economic crisis seems to be «forcing» some couples to formulate reconciliation strategies between childcare and paid work and patterns for dividing paid work that are «innovative» and characterized by interchangeable gender roles (Magaraggia 2013).