DAL LAVORO DI CURA DELLA DONNA AL PROFILO DELLA “TAGESMUTTER”: UNA PROPOSTA DI PROFESSIONALIZZAZIONE

In ancient times, women were involved in domestic work, car-ing for their families, raising and educating their children (Borruso, 2019). Even today, care work covers a large part of women’s time, and it is considered as “non-work” (Latouche, 2023) and as an “in-tangible” dimension (Dato, 2009), since there is no economic recognition. On the other hand, there are many women who – es-pecially after motherhood – decide to be free to choose (Nuss-baum, 2014) not to return to work and devote themselves to the care and education of their child. Can caring work become a pro-fession today? Can this choice realise many women as early child-hood education and care professionals? Can it improve the “bal-ance” of home-work time? This contribution intends to highlight a figure that has only recently emerged in the Italian labour market and in the panorama of early childhood education. We are talking about the ‘Tagesmutter’, a German term meaning ‘day mother’, i.e. a family educator who works in her own way and in a way that differs from that of a nursery school educator or a babysitter. The Tagesmutter works in her own home, where she takes in children from three months to three years old with skills that require learn-ing modus operandi, rules and strategies. The aim is to highlight the construction of this new professional figure.