\n
![](\"https:\/\/content.fortune.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/GettyImages-2048598322-e1710158518307.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n [ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
Italy is known for its devoted mammas. Emperor Nero\u2019s maneuvered him into the line of succession. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi brought his on the campaign trail. Footballer Christian Vieri called his five times a day.<\/p>\n
Yet refusing to buy into the cult of maternity are Italian women themselves, who are having fewer children \u2014 with some eschewing motherhood altogether.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just about the cost of childcare, or the country\u2019s anemic economy \u2014 though women say both these issues come into play. What\u2019s turning them off may be precisely the burden of the myth: \u201cMothers are required to give these children their absolute and total attention,\u201d said Valeria Merlini, a restorer of Renaissance paintings in her late 50s who lives in Rome. \u201cIf you think too hard about having kids you may simply give up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many now are doing just that. Merlini was one of four. She had two children of her own. And those children, both in their 30s, don\u2019t yet have any children themselves. That generational pattern maps onto a wider\u00a0demographic trend<\/a>, with the country\u2019s fertility rate in decline since the mid-1960s.\u00a0<\/p>\n As of the most recent data, Italy was one of the nations with the lowest birth rates in the world at 1.24 per woman \u2014 well below the level needed, in economists\u2019 terms, for the population to sustain itself without immigration. That compares with a fertility rate of 1.8 in neighboring France where President Emmanuel Macron recently fretted that the country needs to take action against a demographic time bomb.<\/p>\n The low birthrate has consequences beyond undermining Italy\u2019s most venerated institution. It\u2019s showing up in the rising burden of national debt, which has in the past few years ballooned close to 140% of output. In terms of the OECD\u2019s so-called \u201cold-age dependency ratio,\u201d which measures the number of people of working age sustaining those aged 65 and over, only Japan is in a worse position.<\/p>\n To counter the outdated popular lore about big families, new cultural touchstones that reflect Italy\u2019s demographic realities are starting to emerge. One example is the 2020 movie \u201cFigli\u201d<\/em>\u00a0or \u201cChildren\u201d in which a couple with an an only child gets pregnant with their second. Tears and terror ensue, with horrified friends and family doing their best to discourage the couple.\u00a0<\/p>\n While \u201cFigli\u201d<\/em>\u00a0is a comedy \u2014 and things work out by the end \u2014 its humor depends on the wide currency of the notion that a second child is unmanageable even if the couple seems stable, has a home and is already parenting one child. The country\u2019s statistics institute shows that perception in practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n Against that backdrop, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni \u2014 herself the single mother of a single child \u2014 is agitating for her compatriots to give parenting a second chance, and in December brought Elon Musk to Rome to beat that drum<\/a>. She\u2019s earmarked \u20ac1 billion ($1.1 billion) in incentives, which consist of tax breaks of up to \u20ac3,000 a year for mothers of two children that will in future be restricted to mothers of three or more.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a number most young couples aren\u2019t willing to even consider. Anna Ferrini, a 28-year-old hairdresser working in Rome, says she\u2019s working too hard to have children and won\u2019t plan for them until she\u2019s achieved her career ambitions of opening her own salon back home in Naples.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf we had more economic help from the government, if I knew I could leave them in a state nursery, it might incentivize me to have kids sooner and keep working,\u201d she said. \u201cAs it is though, I can\u2019t plan like that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In Southern Italy fewer than one in six children under three years old have a place in a state-funded preschool, while in the more affluent North it\u2019s one in three, according to Italy\u2019s statistics institute. That puts a childcare burden on mothers that\u2019s turning many off. Still others are having children, but giving up work, as evidenced by Italy\u2019s female employment rate, which is the lowest in the European Union.\u00a0<\/p>\n To compound the problem, Italy\u2019s government has taken a hard-line stance against the immigration that in places like the UK helps compensate for the societal and economic problems caused by low birthrates.<\/p>\n Although immigrants form a quick fix to labor shortages, they don\u2019t tend to bring with them a whole new attitude to childrearing that has an effect over generations. That\u2019s because when immigrants arrive in Italy they are accustoming themselves to Italian family patterns, and not the other way round, according to Maria Rita Testa, a professor of demography at Rome\u2019s LUISS University.<\/p>\n \u201cWomen are coming to see maternity as one of many options available, something they can chose to do or not, and immigrants tend to also adopt the local model once they\u2019re here.\u201d<\/p>\n Oksana Shmyr, who is 55 and from Ukraine, moved to Italy almost 20 years ago and has made a living working in restaurants and caring for other people\u2019s children. She has one daughter in her 20s and took an active decision not have any more.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was working very hard when I arrived and it would just have been too complicated to have more kids,\u201d she said. She contrasted her choices with those of friends back home. \u201cThey don\u2019t have that much support and yet they have kids, whereas here you see well off couples with maybe one child.\u201d<\/p>\n Spending more than twice what Italy does as a share of its economic output, neighboring France offers more ways for women to remain in the job market after kids. But some say there is a limit to what policy changes will achieve in Italy, when the impediments to big families have attained the intractable level of culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere is this idea of motherhood in Italy that can be unrealistic and charged with too much weight, whereas perhaps in some other countries it is not so all-encompassing,\u201d said Paola Marion, director of Italy\u2019s Psychoanalysis Review whose own patients are mainly women between the ages of 20 and 50. \u201cIf that becomes the reference model for young women, then it\u2019s hard to change with just policy actions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nSubscribe to the new Fortune CEO Weekly Europe newsletter to get corner office insights on the biggest business stories in Europe. Sign up<\/a> for free.<\/div>\n