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11 August 2020 The questions reached 7 thousand families made up of adults with underage children: only one parent should have answered, but 94% did so by women "and this already says a lot about the fact that childcare in Italy is still completely female ". Professor Giulia Pastori, pedagogist at the Bicocca University of Milan, at the head of the team that carried out a survey on distance learning to which children and teenagers were forced during the lockdown, explains this to the Agi agency.   

The point of view that emerged is that of the mothers, partly because it was practically only them who took care of the children, and partly because the focus of the research was precisely to highlight the social impact of distance learning. . And the results were shocking: "65% of mothers believe that distance learning is not compatible with work", therefore, to the direct question whether they have considered leaving the job if the children do not return to the classroom. complete in September "over 30% clearly answer yes".

The difficulties during the lockdown
According to Pastori, while understanding the difficulty of the Covid emergency measures, "too little has been thought about the importance of opening schools from the point of view of social security and female work" and there is a risk of doing the same mistake in view of the new school year and in the case of a second wave. During the lockdown, mothers spent an average of "4 hours a day helping their children: practically a second part-time job in addition to the real one and looking after the house". 98% of the survey were women of Italian nationality and with at least a higher diploma (41%), while 38% had a degree, and 15% also a post-graduate master; the interviewees are on average in conditions of relative well-being and live mainly in the North. 67% of them continued to work from 8 March in smartworking mode, and 62% did so having an employee job (18% were VAT-free and about 4% also faced layoffs). These are mothers on average aged 42 who have 1.4 children, in line with the national figure: for the majority children from primary school: 2855 out of 7 thousand.

"No to the closure of schools"
Ugly, ineffective, difficult, demotivating, unpleasant, impossible: these are all the adjectives that mothers have dedicated to Dad, distance learning, without ever being able to put the cross on a positive attribute. And this is why even in their open replies they have raised an alarm cry: "Some women have managed to ironize on the daily acrobatics of family management with smart-working, which also cancels the boundaries between private and working life and it does not grant timetables. Others have admitted the difficulty of keeping all the pieces together. But all of them warn: the closure of the school cannot be the only solution even in the event of a second wave or the holding of families and the country is at stake ".   

"Underestimated malaise of children and young people"
The Italian situation - commented Pastori - "has no comparison with the rest of Europe: only in Italy has the closure been complete, for all institutions and up to the end of the school year. reflect". According to the researcher - who worked with a team of occupational and educational psychologists - the big absentee in the period of the lockdown was "the malaise of the children, but above all of the boys: it is thought that especially those in high school have dealt better with the situation, but in reality they suffer from the absence of social life, because they are in a phase of life in which they want to immerse themselves in the world ".   

"During the lockdown, poor concentration and boredom, melancholy, loneliness and anger feelings increased in the boys." Once again, it was the mothers who paid for it, improvised psychologists as well as teachers, and in difficulty managing their children at home for many hours a day: "Frustration has also spread to them, while at the same time the dependence and need help ". Hence the appeal: "Strengthen the school, let's not try to solve everything by throwing the burden on the shoulders of families and especially women".