The SOSEF – State of Southern European Fathers report tells the new paternity. That is, it shows that men, when they become fathers, they feel today, much more than in the past, the desire and the responsibility of being support for the growth of their children. Desire and responsibility: two dimensions that the father of past generations translated mainly into economic responsibility, living as the main source of family income. The profound changes that occurred in the social and cultural fields today ask the new fathers to also take on a different responsibility in the life of their children. That is to be emotional and emotional references, for their growth. This is how in recent decades, what was once “the regulatory father” – told how pater familias Guarantor of respect for the rules and often the source of penalties and punishments for his transgressive son – now he has become “emotional father”, or a man who – in front of his son – does not only deal with teaching good and evil, but proposes himself as a guide and reference present in moments of discomfort and pain, actively involved in the life of those who grow up next to him (the father who accompanies the sport or the park, the father who cares, The father who falls asleep the child who cries in the night), available with the other parent to develop a shared parenting model that represents a real novelty on the scene of contemporary parenting.
The world needs responsible fathers, involved and emotionally available, because this parental attitude represents the main protection factor for the emotional growth of the child and – especially in adolescence – a child who He can live his dad as a safe basis in moments of fatigue and difficulty (frequent condition in this time of growth) is much more protected from the risk of developing problems of a behavioral and emotional nature. In the face of this enormous change that occurred in the internal world of men who become fathers, society and politics do not yet seem able to align with it. In particular, in Italy the ability of the production system and the world of work is still lacking to promote rules, regulations and procedures that are really to support the new needs of a pair of parents who put a child around the world.
For example, Italy proposes to the newborn a leave of paternity of only two weeks, in comparison with what Spain does (where the newly paid to 16 weeks of parental leave). In the same way, in Italy, despite the enormous progress made to encourage the availability of nursery school throughout the national territory, The costs of this service – in some areas of the nation – remain huge, sometimes even prohibitive, So much so that the birth of a child represents for women who become mothers a passage that leads to the abandonment (more or less long) of their work. The complexity of the modern world, the transformations of gender roles, the need to put the educational relationship at the center of the growth project of a child (theme today very important, considering the current emergency and the enormous increase in behavioral and emotional discomfort in evolutionary age) oblige us to report The issue of support for parenting at the center of the public debate and to consider it one of the key elements that must regulate and encourage new work policies in favor of those adult couples who decide to become parental pairs.
This passage is extremely necessary in this time of growing denatality It is increasingly push, an element that itself represents a social emergency for most of the western world, in particular for Italy. Good, in the data that emerged from the SOSEF relationship, there is that the fathers who tell each other, show a renewed way and a new ability to live in their paternitywhich is made more involved and emotionally competent than in the past and which, precisely for this reason, becomes not only a protection element for the growth of a child, but also factor of transformation and human evolution for the entire male gender.
