D.economic difficulties and a sense of insecurity. But also infertility and waiting for the famous “right time” that never comes. The reasons for the demographic winter that our country is experiencing are many and complex. The issue is serious, as evidenced by the data disclosed during the forum “The Birth is the Future”.
It’s a record: 1.24 children per woman
For the first time ever, fewer than 400,000 babies were born in Italy in 2021. Our country is below the number of children per woman which would guarantee the balance between generations, that is 2. Today we are at 1.24 (in 1965 we were at 2.67). Meanwhile, the population is decreasing and aging visibly: in 2030 we will be 1.6 million fewer inhabitants.
Today the thirty-year-olds are a third less than the fifties. And in turn, the under 30s are a third fewer than those in their thirties. And it is a problem of society, they say. Because, if in 2050 we have many more people who have stopped working than those who are still employed, the social system will no longer be sustainable.
Infertility and guilt
Pure, for a couple struggling with their desire for parenthood, the drama is terribly individual. Indeed, the fact that having a child is conceivable today at an increasingly advanced age, weighs like a sense of guilt on those who have the feeling of having “missed the train” forever.
Why tell your infertility story
«This is why it is essential to tell and share your infertility story with other women who have gone through the same experience. For this she was born Parolefertili.ita platform of story sharingin which to share your journey in search of a child“, “, tells Cristina Cenci, anthropologist and founder of Parole Fertili. Born in 2016, the site is also a narrative community on Facebookand it became a book, published by Mondadori Electa.
“Hide the desire for a child in social, friend and emotional networks it helps us not to represent ourselves as “sterile”, sick, inferior, guilty ». The load of fears, information and discussion needs, emotions and ambivalences: it all weighs on the couple. “On the contrary,” continues Cenci, “between strangers who have had the same experience, on the other hand, an emotional harmony is created, an anonymous intimacy. Really fertile words can come from them. And with them it can be born a narrative community that allows you to elaborate what happens, step by step “.
Infertility and waiting for the “right time”
Because in a process of MAP and assisted fertilization very different moments are faced: from the unspeakable desire to the enthusiastic hope that it “works”, from the anguish of waiting to the frustration of failure. To the pain of loss.
On Parole Fertili, for example, you can read Stefy’s story. “I’ve never been a woman like today. With this blood that treacherously flows between my legs and reminds me that I have failed. Also this time. I have been 36 for two months and I’m one of those women who waited for “the right time”one of those who wanted the certainty of a two-bedroom house, a mortgage, a love story that could become a life story, a job to devote more hours than necessary, almost looking for a legitimation of a nine-month stand by authorization “.
A story, as Cenci explains, which contains elements common to many. “First of all, waiting for the right moment. And that is the social times considered legitimate for a child “.
On the one hand it expects: of create the economic and emotional conditions to guarantee the child a stable home and future. Trivially: if a 19-year-old girl told us that she is pregnant, we would experience the news as an unexpected adversity. On the other the public discourse on the birth rate weighs on the shoulders of would-be mothers as a fault: do you arrive at this age and want a child? But what do you expect?
“At his age! Why have you made up your mind just now? “
Elena writes: “I turned to specialists to see if there were any real possibilities. I was turned inside out like a sock… Expensive, sometimes painful, often humiliating tests… it’s not nice to be told: Eh lady, at your age… Why have you made up your mind just now?“
Also on Parole Fertili there is also the story of Manuela: “I was used to living with the sense of inadequacy, that subtle feeling,
constant and a bit bastard, which always makes you feel that you are not up to the situation, that you are not “something enough”. But this time it was different. Different because we grew up with the idea that having a child is the most natural and simple thing in the world. It is not about being able or not, but about doing it or not doing it. Want it or not want it. We were not ready to face a third way: not
succeed“.
Children, the crowning glory of adult life. And the obsession
«If once», Cenci explains «children marked the entrance, especially for a woman, into adult life, today they are the crowning glory. What if they don’t arrive? It is the fault of those who do not know how to do them. But this is a social construction. A construction that also holds the individual subject, that is every woman, in a grip of contradictory messages », explains the anthropologist.
The obsession with finding a child it is a vertigo that affects the lives of many couples. “Of women, above all, who, during the journey, are totally absorbed by the journey”. Also in these cases, reading the stories of others is a support: “It does not free you from obsession but opens up glimmers: other women have accepted that they cannot have children and have found different ways to recompose their lives”.
The metaphor of fertile words is the gift: of one’s life story, of one’s emotions, of how one can always and in any case feel fertile. Story sharing is therefore “one of the ways in which stories can be taken care of: offering words to express fear and despair, offering meanings, inspiration, courage, strength”,
iO Donna © REPRODUCTION RESERVED