The wellbeing of single parents in Italy before and after the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

In the last two decades, the Italian society has been experiencing great transformations in its family demography, with an impressive spreading of out-of-wedlock childbearing, non marital unions, and marital separations. Among the consequences of these changes, an increasing share of children experience the dissolution of their parents’ union and are raised in a non-intact family, i.e. a household where either the mother or the father is absent. After a brief description of the recent evolution of Italian families and their characteristics, in this paper we focus on single parents, considering both those living with their children and without them. Our study exploits data from an ad hoc survey carried out in April 2021, on a sample of single parents with cohabiting and non-cohabiting children, to evaluating the consequences of the recent COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on the economic and psychological wellbeing of single parents in Italy. Our results suggest that single parents’ (low) satisfaction for their economic resources did not change dramatically, also due to their pre-existing economic difficulties, but a substantial decline in psychological wellbeing has been detected, especially among women. Nevertheless, respondents remain optimistic in their expectations for the future.