“Women? My first aspiration is to be a mother.” Mennuni launches again about ‘cool’ motherhood

Lavinia Mennuni sparks a political dispute after her words on the birth rate problem. Senator Fratelli d’Italia had this to say about the topic during the December 28 episode of Coffee Break, the La7 talk show hosted by Andrea Pancani: “My mother always told me ‘remember that everything you want to do (and I wanted to be involved in politics since I was 12), your first aspiration must be to be a mother.’ And we must remind our daughters of this, otherwise the risk is that in the name of professional fulfillment, which I hope and which is right, let us forget that there is a need and a mission, so to speak, to bring children into the world who will be future Italian citizens. We must help institutions, the Vatican, associations to make motherhood “legal” again. We need to make motherhood “legal” again. girls and boys aged 18 and 20 want to get married and start a family. Then the state will follow.”

These statements generated criticism from the left, but Mennuni, who spoke in the afternoon on Radio Giornale, did not back down: “Legal motherhood? Previously, children were raised even under bombs, as in the Second World War, today too much attention is paid to professional aspiration, to oneself. There is no longer that community sense of bringing children into the world, which is fundamental. In history we have had other phases of very serious economic crises, today, with Italy having one of the lowest birth rates in the world, we cannot limit ourselves just to economic revenues. The State must support the birth rate with incentive policies such as the implementation of the single subsidy. But we must also do a lot of cultural work. I don’t understand the controversy around this, because apparently everyone agrees. Whoever attacks me today and points the finger – urges the FdI representative – should sit down at the table so we can address the issue together”.