“Knowing I had the chance to put my son two minutes from here was very important, because I can reach him any time, very fast,” one of the firm’s finance bosses, Melania Sandrin, explains.
Without the creche she would have struggled to return to work: she didn’t want to lean on her own parents, and state kindergartens won’t generally take children for a full day.
“There’s also a priority list… and there are few, few places,” Melania says.
Like Valentina, she and her friends delayed having children into their late 30s, keen to establish their careers, and Melania isn’t sure she’d have a second baby, even now. “It’s not easy,” she says.
Later childbirth, a growing trend here, is another factor in lowering fertility.
All of that is why CEO Katia da Ros thinks Italy needs to make “massive changes” to address its population problem.
“It’s not the €1,000 payments that make a difference, but having services like free kindergartens. If we want to change the situation we need strong action,” she says.