Italy's Fertility Day Falls Flat Amid Claims of Sexism, Racism

[Eugene]

Source: NBC News

SEP 22 2016, 10:47 AM ET

Italy's Fertility Day Falls Flat Amid Claims of Sexism, Racism

by CLAUDIO LAVANGA

Fertility Day was aimed at helping Italians "get busy" to boost the country's record-low birthrate, but the nationwide drive culminating Thursday delivered little more than controversy.

The first signs of fertility furor surrounded an ad campaign launched ahead of events exploring reproductive health that sparked allegations of sexism and racism.

The Health Ministry posted tweets in August showing a young woman holding an hourglass under the slogan "Beauty knows no age, fertility does." Another warned: "Hurry up! Don't wait for the stork."

The posts and pamphlets drew scorn and condemnation on social media, with critics saying people needed help finding work — not boosting their fertility.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/italy-s-fertility-day-falls-flat-amid-claims-sexism-racism-n652466


[font size=1]Ad put out by Italy's Health Ministry promoting Fertility Day. Ministero della salute via Twitter[/font]

[jonno99]

1. I'd volunteer to donate my, erm... time.

[forest444]

2. More Opus Dei garbage.

Not unlike Bible thumpers in the U.S., they're obsessed with birth itself (as a concept); but heaven help that newborn if its mother needs assistance of any kind, or if she's just a shade too tawny.

This has been tried before, with predictably disastrous results.

The most famous example is probably Romania. Ceaușescu banned abortion in 1967 as part of a broader plan to hike birth rates, leaving many families unable to properly cope, with large numbers of children ending up in orphanages or (once Ceaușescu fell) as street urchins.

Something similar was tried in Argentina, where the country's first Opus Dei President - Gen. Juan Carlos Onganía - instituted a "benefit for large families" and other such incentives in the late 1960s (as well as a crackdown on abortions, which are readily available but legal only for rape/incest/health reasons).

Argentina had the lowest birth rate in Latin America at the time (an average of 3 children per woman, compared to 6 in the rest of the region). These measures led to a baby boom through the '70s which, though milder than the one experienced in the U.S in the '40s and '50s, resulted in up to a million excess births before this baby boom subsided in the early '80s.

This became a real problem once the economy collapsed in 1981 after a Bush-style speculative wave. Half of all children who grew up in Argentina in the '80s, grew up in poverty. The economy improved temporarily in the early '90s; but it was a jobless recovery, and many of these young people found only temporary gigs or outright unemployment. Crime rates soared.

In short, today's baby boom only means problems 20 years down the road. Should there be an economic boom in Italy 10 to 20 years from now (magari!), that won't be a problem; but barring that, they may be asking for trouble.