The Cost of Children. Which Welfare for Families, 2010

With this volume starts the new series of Reports Cisf on the family where the results of  an original survey are presented. The survey, will be repeated ever two years, is based on a sample of 4000 interviews, statistically representative of Italian families.
The theme of this Report is the cost of children, faced as a cost of the family, not merely in economical terms but in a context of cultural, social and political choices.
First the Report draws distinctions  between costs of maintenance (basic needs: food, clothes, hygiene, instruction…) and costs of bringing up: the other needs, the “dedicated time”).
The cost of children is valued here starting from the idea that they are a central value whose cost changes, if considered as a good to invest in, a consumer good, a meritorious or a  relational good.
Many sustain that in the contemporary society children are not anymore goods to invest in,  because of the difficulties and the uncertainties  of life and that they become only a consumer good, almost a luxury for those who can permit it: but is it really in this way?
Beyond the economical aspects, analysed here in detail, the cost of children emerges above all as a choice of values more than of material sustainability. Understand what is the cost of children  makes it understandable how Italian society will change in the coming years and decades.
The Report points out which are the implications for social policies and for the model of social State which we can and must wish..
The point is to unmask the hypocrisy of a society that affirms to love children, but is little disposed to pay the costs.
We are still far from having a subsidiary society  towards families with children. The basic risk is very clear: if Italy does not organise its social welfare system on a children scale,  it will go towards a progressive impoverishment considering the ageing of the population and the precariousness of the new generations.

Re-Thinking the “cost” of children in an uncertain and risky society
Pierpaolo Donati

The cost of children: an investment, a consumption, a meritorious or a relational good?
Pierpaolo Donati

The CISF survey
Francesco Belletti, Margerita Lanz, Luigi Tronca, Martina Menon, Federico Perali, Pierpaolo Donati

How many, how and at what cost? A socio- demographic analysis of children in Italian families
Gisella Accolla, Gian Carlo Blangiardo

The cost of raising children
Martina Menon, Federico Perali

Family and children: towards a macro-economy of common good
Luigi Campiglio

Which resources for the transition to parenthood?
Giovanna Rossi, Elisabetta Carrà, Sara Mazzucchelli

A new welfare for children: subsidary, societary, relational   
Pierpaolo Donati