Early motherhood in Italy: explaining the ‘invisibility’ of a social phenomenon

This chapter provides a discussion of the specificities of early motherhood in Italy, and has two aims: first, to provide a detailed and critical analysis of the social policies available to young mothers, and second, to explore the effectiveness of welfare provision reserved for young mothers, particularly for young lone mothers, in a Mediterranean welfare state. Overall, welfare policies and training strategies targeted at lone mothers are scarce in Italy. This scarcity is linked to the low social visibility of teenage mothers, which consequently delays the implementation of focused intervention strategies. Due to the fact that teenage childbearing and motherhood is an uncommon phenomenon in Italy, for the purpose of this chapter, the discussions of early motherhood include young mothers under the age of 25.