The Italian newspaper Domani and The Why Wait Agenda are continuing their collaboration with a series of reports on the issue of choosing to have children. This eighth article was published in Italian in Domani in October 2023.
There are currently 59 million people living in Italy. But according to Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, it might only be 50 in seventy years' time. Italy will face the most significant population decline this century among European countries.
Each country has two approaches to replenishing its population. The main one is children being born. To maintain the same population numbers over time, net of war and epidemics, a country would need a fertility rate – that is, the number of children born per woman – of 2.1 (the decimal is used to cushion the percentage, luckily now very small, of neonatal or infant mortality). For every two parents who die eventually, there are two children to replace them: hence the term “replacement rate”.
Another way for the population to avoid decreasing is to welcome foreigners to replace the newborns missing in the total number of residents. This is why the debate on natality often intertwines with the debate on immigration, sometimes with populist tendencies - such as the risk of «surrendering to ethnic substitution» raised by the Italian Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida, an exponent of the right-wing Fratelli d'Italia, the same party as the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Upon closer inspection, the contribution of immigrants – who once in Italy, in turn, often have children of their own – has over the years been important in keeping birth rates from dropping too much: even today the fertility rate of “native” women, women with Italian citizenship, is 1.18 – much lower than that of women of other nationalities resident in Italy. The idea of large foreign families is no longer true, though: in just thirteen years, from 2008 to 2021, the fertility rate of immigrant women dropped from 2.53 to 1.87.
NATALIST POLICIES
The issue is frequently viewed from a natalist perspective, an ideology that puts the emphasis on the fact that we “should” have more children. There is often an insistence on what Alessandra Minello, professor of Demography at the University of Padua, in her essay Non è un Paese per madri (No country for women, published by Laterza in 2022, only available in Italian at the moment) calls «the myth of motherhood», portrayed as the fulfilment and natural instinct of women. Not all newborns count equally, however: the idea behind natalism is primarily to have “native” children being born.
Another increasingly common perspective on the low birth rate problem is to downplay its significance, often with ecological arguments. It might not be a bad idea to have fewer children, considering the current population. Reducing the population reduces pollution and resource consumption, and that is a good thing. But it ignores the suffering of those who would like to have children but cannot, or are unable, to do so; and the consequences that a declining population has on individual countries.
«In Italy we haven't come close to the replacement rate for decades» says Alessandra Minello, and Italy's unfortunately not the only one. France is the only European country where the number of children per woman nearly reaches 2. The average in Italy today is 1.24. Individual choices aside, «we come from decades of low fertility and therefore have smaller cohorts of fertile women». Our society is experiencing a shift towards an older population due to declining fertility rates and a rising number of elderly people. With the result that, «absurdly, less investment is made in sectors such as education and childcare, because numerically they are less important».
The topic of empty cradles is often linked to discussions about pensions. This is 'not very effective' according to Minello: «You can hardly persuade a generation to have children in order to pay pensions for the elderly». And she is not convinced by the 'minimising' reasoning either: «Saying "because too many children are born in some countries, I am not responsible for putting those who want children here in a position to have them" does not make much sense to me». It is better to focus «on the question of free choice and fulfilment of desire: those who want children must be put in a position, at least potentially, to have them».
So, let's consider a third perspective: the one that begins with individual desire. The question then is: are these few children we are having in fact all the children we want to have? No: throughout the industrialised world, the “fertility gap” – the gap between children we want and children we have – is growing. In Italy, for example, we would like to have two children, and we barely manage one and a quarter.
THE CASE OF SARDINIA
And there is a region in Italy where the fertility rate does not even reach one: in Sardinia the average is 0.99 children per woman. The island «has experienced an extraordinary depopulation in its central part» explains Gianfranco Bottazzi, professor of Sociology of Economic and Labour Processes at the University of Cagliari, with a consequent ageing of the population, which «has the primary effect of lowering the birth rate».
The fact that Sardinia is struggling economically is not, according to the lecturer, such a key issue. In his view, people give up having children not so much for lack of money but because «an evil of the soul has spread. The rejection of responsibility, the fear for the future are widespread problems everywhere, but here they have had special consequences due to an already difficult starting point».
Bottazzi highlights two other «thought-provoking records»: Sardinia is the Italian region «with the highest suicide rate and the highest per capita intake of benzodiazepines, in other words, psychotropic drugs». In short, the «propaganda» of the beautiful sea, clean air and «centenarians» (also a bit of a legend because «yes, there are a few more hundred-year-olds, but Sardinia's average life expectancy is lower than that of Lombardy») is not enough. Sardinian society is marked by suffering that is often ignored. Whereas choosing to have children requires «serenity and a hope for the future».
INCREASINGLY FEWER CHILDREN
Over the last five years, Sardinia has lost 50 thousand inhabitants: the number of residents has fallen from 1 million 622 thousand to 1 million 575 thousand. Some of this is because of emigration, but mostly to the falling birth rate. «In the early 1990s, there were 2,400 babies a year being born in our Duilio Casula hospital: the number has now halved» confirms Stefano Angioni, who heads the obstetrics and gynaecology department: «From 15,000 new babies a year, we are now down to 8,000 in Sardinia».
Sardinian women, who have a long history of self-determination in their reproductive choices – both Angioni and Minello cite the early and widespread diffusion of contraception – now tend to become mothers at a later age. The average age at the first child is close to 33, six months older than the already high Italian average. «Twenty years ago, it seemed strange to see women in their forties having their first child, now it is the norm» says Angioni. So much so that even the medical definition of 'geriatric pregnancy' has changed, and now indicates women who become mothers «from the age of thirty-eight and up».
«The delayed pursuit of pregnancy is linked to social factors, to unemployment, to having to fulfil a series of life projects earlier» says the gynaecologist. The key factor behind the decline in births, in Sardinia as elsewhere, «is precisely that the maternal age that has moved too far forward, at a time when female fertility is decreasing. And children, fewer and fewer in number, become more and more precious. The anxiety of having that one child – to have it, firstly, and then to have a healthy one – leads women to navigate this period with more attention but also with more concern».
«When a population goes below a certain number of births per couple» concludes Stefano Angioni, the trend becomes «irreversible, and that population is doomed to extinction». This is a distant prospect, but it cannot be said that demographers, sociologists, and doctors have not raised the alarm.
Now is the time for politics. Because the people who want children are already there, in Italy like everywhere else, without the need to “convince” anyone or force their hand. It is enough to work on creating the conditions so that having a child is not seen as an insurmountable task, and to pave the way for aspiring parents, instead of blocking it.
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