Philip he is 17 years old and Sabrina Prati, central director of Istat, asks why all this talk about the birth rate decline as a problem: “If there are fewer of us in Italy, aren’t we better off?” Shortly before Adrian, 15 years old, had taken the question a little further away and apparently turned it positively: “Are there really too many of us in the world?”. But perhaps in the end he also meant the same thing, because he immediately added “how are all these people sustainable, in light of the climate crisis?”. Also the question of Michele, 18 years old, has a serious and worried tone: «Already today for every young person in Italy there are two elderly people. In a few years there will be three. What will this mean in concrete terms?”. These are three of the questions that the kids asked this morning during the first day of the General States of Birth. Tomorrow other young high school students will interview the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti. It was the promise of this fourth edition: young people would be protagonists. A path taken at school, the analysis and study of documents and data on the topic, participation in a prestigious moment of discussion and dialogue, with half the government, the entire political spectrum, businesses, information… all present . Direct questions, as perhaps we adults are no longer capable of asking. Concrete questions, which connect the “maximum systems” with “me”. Concerned questions, one might almost say dark: within what narrative, what reading of reality, did we raise them? It’s nice to see them as protagonists, but the first word that sticks with me from this first day of the General States of Birth is a colour: “black”. This is not a criticism of them, let’s be clear: it’s our fault.
first name
«Shame, shame!». The Minister for Family, Birth and Equal Opportunities Eugenia Roccella she has just gone on stage when the boos and screams start. She didn’t even start speaking when some kids from the audience shouted and held up signs: “We decide about our bodies.” Cameras and smartphones fall on them. Gigi De Palo invited to send a representative on stage.
De Palo is the president of the Natality Foundation, a group of men and women who do other things for a living but who have set up the General States of Natality, initially as vox clamans in desert, to draw attention to the demographic emergency: «It is a great effort but we continue to do it so that tomorrow no one can say that we have all put our heads in the sand, but not us», he said at the start of the morning. Initially it seems that no one wants to go up, “we are giving you an opportunity”, repeats De Palo, then a girl appears on stage.
She is invited to dialogue with the minister Roccella, who approaches with a conversational attitude, the boys repeat their “I decide” and the minister says «we agree. Nobody says that someone else has to decide about women’s bodies. This is why we are here… because today women are not free to decide about their bodies, they are not free to decide to have a child if they wish.” She keeps her eyes lowered, doesn’t look anyone in the face. “What’s your name?” De Palo asks her. She does not answer. “In the past few days I tried to contact you on Instagram, you didn’t respond,” he says. Her gaze is glued to her smartphone, she never lifts it. He reads – he shouts – a statement: «motherhood becomes the only life objective to be hoped for whose real motivation, hidden behind the consecrated triad of God, homeland, family, consists in the creation of new human capital to feed the system capitalist”. And also: “There is a genocide underway and they want us to have children.”
We always tell ourselves that making room for the authentic participation of children implies the acceptance of “losing control over the process”: otherwise it is just window dressing. But the second word that remains for me is “name”: to participate and to dialogue you need to get involved. Otherwise it’s just a fiction.
censorship
We try to move forward, Minister Eugenia Roccella would like to respond, the demonstrators continue to chant their slogans. Jessica Barcella, in the eighth month of pregnancy, a freelancer, tries to talk: she would like to talk about “the obstacle course” that began when the two lines indicating a positive result appeared on the pregnancy test. «I am not asking the State to take responsibility for the “risky” career choices I made in an attempt not to betray that 17-year-old girl who wanted everything from life, but let’s remember that today many people have career paths that cannot be pigeonholed into a permanent job and in a fixed period of time,” he says. The demonstrators continue to make noise, the journalists continue to film them.
Minister Roccella leaves the event, “in the hope” that this will serve to calm the waters, to give the other people on stage “a chance to speak”. Adriano Bordignon, president of the Families Forum, makes a brief speech, then everything is suspended for ten minutes. A few hours later, Minister Roccella wrote in a bitter note that «I chose to leave the States General of Natality to allow the people who were on stage with me, an eight-month pregnant mother who gave her testimony and the president of the Forum of Adriano Bordignon families, to be able to speak without suffering the same fate of censorship as me. Even this wasn’t enough. […] It wasn’t just a censure towards me or the government, but a profound hostility towards motherhood and fatherhood, towards those who decide to bring a child into the world, exercising their own freedom and without taking anything away from the freedom of others. In short, what is contested, in the end, is motherhood as a free choice.” Have we really arrived there? Meh.
freedom
At the beginning of the morning, Gigi De Palo had built his (beautiful) introductory speech on four words: time, freedom, team, history. The time we no longer have, the urgency of moving from analyzes to facts. The awareness of being called, all of us, at this moment to change history. The teamwork necessary to do it, without parochialism, without wanting to put up flags, without divisions, without controversies: «The birth rate is an issue that unites, not that divides. Making a controversy about the birth rate is the best way to create alibis for standing still”, said De Palo without being able to imagine what would happen a quarter of an hour later.
But above all he insisted on freedom: «This is not about convincing young people or women to have children. We don’t care about convincing anyone and those who accuse us of this have not understood the work we are doing. This is about putting young people, women and families in a position to make their dreams come true. This is why we say it is a theme of freedom. It’s about putting everyone in a position to freely decide what they want to do. Anyone who doesn’t want a child is free not to. Those who want a child, however, in Italy today are not free to do so, because having a child is the main cause of poverty. So it’s not true that we are free. This is really a problem of freedom. This is why we have never trivialized the birth rate in “having children” but we insist so much on the word freedom. […] We don’t need children to pay pensions. Children are desire, gift, they are the sign that a country returns to hope, to desire. Children must be neither a duty nor a luxury, but a freedom.” The fourth word can only be this, freedom.
Europe
The fifth and final word is Europe. The morning, after the interview with the director of Istat, includes discussions with and between politicians. The minister is here Alessandra Locatelli (Lega), the deputy minister Maria Teresa Bellucci (Brothers of Italy), Marco Furfaro (Pd), Elena Bonetti (Action), Mary Elena Boschi (Italia Viva). Giuseppe Conte (5 Star Movement) e Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia) sent a video message.
The government claims the 2 billion put on families, the joint attention on the two poles of the demographic question, birth rate and elderly people, the commitment to streamline bureaucracy. Elena Bonetti urges the issuance of the implementing decrees provided for by the Family Act and asks that the expenses incurred by families to raise children be recognized as a contribution given to the country and returned with negative taxation. Maria Elena Boschi asks to invest more in smartworking and answers for caregivers. From many quarters – government, opposition, associations – comes the appeal to take the game to another field, the European one. The first to talk about it was Adriano Bordignon at the Rimini Meeting last August: It’s been a topic on everyone’s lips for a few weeks (we talk about it extensively with Bordignon, De Palo and the demographer Alessandro Rosina also in the issue of VITA dedicated to the upcoming European elections). Today the most explicit words on this were said by Marco Furfaro (Pd): «Europe has approved a stability pact according to which military and weapons expenses are excluded from the calculation of public debt, but not those for the family . It’s incomprehensible. Let’s fight together for this.”
We have the issue of VITA magazine “Europe to be remade” is dedicated to the most relevant social issues to be explored in depth in view of the European elections next June. If you are a subscriber or subscriber to VITA you can read it immediately from here. And thank you for the support you give us. If you want to read the magazine, receive the next issues and access dedicated content and features, subscribe here.
