Italian parents are turning to psychiatrists to help them deal with the country’s “nightmare” long school holidays.
Italy’s state schools broke up on Friday for the usual three-month break, with groups of jubilant children gathering for the tradition of squirting each other with water pistols and tipping bags of flour over each other’s heads.
For their parents, however, worry is setting in as to how to entertain their offspring until schools resume in September.
As more Italian grandparents keep working into their 70s, the traditional option of conscripting nonna e nonno is disappearing.
Along with Malta and Latvia, Italy’s school summer holidays are the longest in Europe and have long been a source of angst for working mothers and fathers.
The number of parents who seek psychiatric help between June and August increases by up to 40 per cent, according to the Order of Psychologists of Lombardy.
Common complaints include anxiety, irritability and a sense of inadequacy, according to Mara Compagnoni, a psychologist.
“Holidays are meant to be an opportunity for the family to connect but the myth of the perfect holiday and the impossibility of satisfying the needs of children, work and partners often generates stress and frustration,” she told TGCom24, an Italian news website.
The annual struggle to secure childcare is a logistical, financial and even psychological challenge.
Among working mothers, 63 per cent say they feel “exhausted” during the summer holidays because of the strain of juggling work and family.
“For parents, summer is a nightmare,” said Francesco Fiore, one of the founders of an irreverent blog called Mamma di Merda [Sh—y Mummy], which explores parenting issues.
The ordeal begins months before, as parents turn to spreadsheets in an effort to work out how they are going to have their children cared for while they are at work, she said.
The summer holidays are officially 13 to 14 weeks, but can be even longer.
Ms Fiore explained: “When they reopen in September, schools are often disorganised. Staff have not been appointed and they often start in a partial way. Often it is not until late September that they get going properly.
“Society is changing profoundly – a lot of grandparents now work until they are 70, or they are not willing to do childcare, or they don’t live nearby.
“Families who have grandparents who do not work are very fortunate.”
Many more Italian women now work compared to the past, when their mothers and grandmothers were resigned – if not content – to look after the kids all summer while their husbands went to work.
The situation has also been worsened by inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, which has meant that babysitting and summer camps, in either public or private facilities, are ever more expensive.
Big financial sacrifices
Around 72 per cent of families have to make big financial sacrifices to pay for childcare and summer camps, according to Altroconsumo, a consumer rights organisation, and Censis, a polling firm.
Some couples are compelled to go on holiday separately – dad will take the children off for a couple of weeks, then it is mum’s turn, so that together they can cover a three or four-week block with their annual leave.
Others resign themselves to having their kids glued to screens for most of the day while they work from home.
Last year, Italian mothers launched a campaign to reduce the length of the school holidays, saying they were fed up with entertaining their children for three months each summer.
An online petition to have school terms lengthened and summer holidays reduced attracted more than 70,000 signatures.
“Don’t trust all those idyllic photos you see on Instagram,” the newspaper La Repubblica commented. “Summer is a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of Italian families.”
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