Transnational Parents in Italy: Life Satisfaction and Mental Health

This article studies the association between transnational parenthood, that is, mothers and fathers who have migrated, leaving at least one child in the country of origin, and well-being among first-generation immigrants in Italy. Transnational households have been researched mostly through qualitative interviews and ethnographies. This paper uses nationally representative data for Italy from the Survey on Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens (2011–2012), therefore enabling to generalise findings from the sample to the national population of (regular) migrants. Results show that transnational parents are more likely to have poorer life satisfaction and mental health compared to migrants whose children are in Italy. The association remains significant even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, time since migration, and area of origin. The well-being gap further increases if the children abroad are under 12 years old. Migrants with poor contact with their children are particularly at risk for poor mental health and low life satisfaction. The result underlines the relevance of reaffirming parental social presence to contrast the negative implications of physical distance on well-being. Importantly, the negative association between distance parenting and well-being holds not only for women, as found by previous literature, but also for men. This finding challenges the image of fathers as uncaring, supporting recent contributions that emphasise the complexity of the phenomenon of transnational fatherhood.