The second day

In Italy, it is estimated that between 7 and 10 million people care every day for a non-self-sufficient family member. They do so without a contract, without pay and without defined working hours.

In most cases, they do so while also continuing to work.

This is not a marginal condition. It is a widespread reality affecting millions of families, and only recently has it begun to enter public debate, social policies and organisational reflection.

The issue of caregiving in relation to work does not always involve an immediate exit from the labour market. More often, it involves a gradual reduction in participation.

Those who care for a family member rarely stop working from one day to the next. More often, they give up business trips, decline roles with greater responsibility, or step back from projects that require more time and physical presence.

From the outside, this may appear as disengagement or reduced ambition. The data tell a different story.

According to several European surveys, more than 40% of family caregivers say they have given up professional opportunities in order to continue providing care. Around one in five reduces their working hours. A smaller share leaves employment altogether.

The point is that withdrawal does not always happen visibly. Often, it happens by subtraction.

The paradox is clear: a socially essential function continues to rely largely on informal and unpaid work, often at the expense of the formal, paid work of those who provide it.

Women continue to carry the greatest burden, representing over 70% of family caregivers in Italy. Many are between the ages of 35 and 60: the very years in which a career would normally accelerate, consolidate or move towards decision-making roles.

It is at this intersection between care and work that a significant part of the long-term employment and income gap is shaped.

There is an expression used in the literature: caregiver burden. It refers to the cumulative physical, emotional and organisational load that comes from holding together ongoing care responsibilities and professional life.

It does not simply mean having less time.

It means living in a constant negotiation: between the urgencies of work and those of the family; between the availability required by the company and the availability required by someone who depends on you; between the professional identity one would like to preserve and the relational identity that cannot be put on hold.

When caregiving becomes a structural condition, responses should also become structural.

Reliable local services, genuinely accessible leave, concrete organisational flexibility and targeted welfare tools are still too often insufficient or uneven. Yet they are essential elements for transforming the individual management of fatigue into a more shared responsibility.

In Italy, something is beginning to move, although at different speeds and with varying degrees of intensity. Law 33/2023 introduced, for the first time, legal recognition of the family caregiver, marking a significant step in an area that had long lacked a clear framework. It is a first step, not yet sufficient, but useful in making visible what for years had remained implicit.

There is, however, another level that no law can replace: the way we inhabit our workplaces every day.

Many forms of fatigue do not enter company data, do not appear in shared calendars and are not declared in a Monday morning meeting.

We do not know whether the person sitting next to us spent the night in hospital, slept only a few hours, or had already managed medicines, urgent phone calls or the fragility of someone who depends on them before arriving at the office.

We almost never truly know other people’s second day.

This is why kindness at work is not a matter of personality, nor an accessory form of courtesy. It is a relational competence. It means suspending hasty judgements, avoiding the mistake of confusing tiredness with lack of interest, reduced availability with poor motivation, or silence with distance.

We often ask for performance from people who are already carrying far more than we imagine. Those who are able to recognise this make a quiet but enormous difference.

To those who have done this for me too, thank you.

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