And to think that we had just started talking about freedom. Of the freedom to choose to bring children into the world to make a wish come true. Despite the obstacle course that this entails for a young family. And how to remove them, those obstacles, which have to do with a tax system that is not yet universally rewarding, concern the too often prohibitive access to housing, forced resignations, precarious or poorly paid contracts, the difficult family-work conciliation… For this reason, a group of mothers and fathers together with many young people – not a political force, not the government, but civil society, the third sector – have been organizing the “General States of Birthrate” for 3 years. To listen and reason – freely – of our future, together with an audience in which hundreds of young people sit.
This is why the small group of students who, to express dissent, prevented Minister Eugenia Roccella from speaking – in addition to committing an uncivilized and unconstitutional act, as President Mattarella appropriately stigmatized – above all inflicted a wound on freedom which is the foundation of the birth rate . The same freedom that is always damaged when someone is prevented from expressing their thoughts. In a democracy it is a non-negotiable value: everyone has the right first and foremost to be heard. At a conference, in university classrooms, during a cultural event. And it is the same reason why the organizers also wanted to guarantee those who contested the possibility of expressing their point of view, captured by reading a statement from the stage. But then it became an intolerant response, of total closure, to the point that in addition to the words prevented from the minister, the demonstrators did not even want to listen to those pronounced despite everything by Jessica Barcella, a mother who recounted her experience, and by the president of the Forum of families, Adriano Bordignon. Thus ending up reproducing themselves that attitude with a “repressive” flavor, to use no other words, which, in their intentions, they declared to oppose.
However, the very few protesters would have achieved a second objective if all attention was now captured by the passively aggressive episode, thus forgetting the very issue of the birth rate. With the risk of missing yet another opportunity to affirm that – if there is an urgency for our country to be addressed by de-ideologizing it, freeing it from partisan exploitation – it is precisely that of the demographic winter and its dramatic consequences. Untying the knots that often lead to the postponement and renunciation of the choice to have children, in fact, would not only make it possible to contain the imbalances between old and new generations, but would also be the prerequisite for reducing the social inequalities of which young people are today the first victims. To face this challenge, we need to put the pieces together, not sterile entrenchments. Constant attention is required. We need a synthesis, not an ideological opposition.
The discussion on the liberated birth rate includes that on maternity and paternity, on foster care and adoption, on education and citizenship, which still remains a mirage for the 870 thousand foreign students who attend schools and universities and the vast majority were born in Italy. We need to be able to talk about this. Even the protesters of the General States of Birth, free to express their dissent in a non-violent way, would have had a civil duty to listen. Moreover, in their interest.
