A few years ago, a Danish travel agency started a campaign to encourage people to have children.
Dubbed “Do it for mom, do it for Denmark,” it encouraged young couples to have children, using funny ads offering discounts on vacations and baby supplies.
Over the past decades, Denmark’s birth rate has been dropping, and for a country, that means no next generation to keep things going. But this isn’t a problem only plaguing Denmark. All of Europe has been suffering from low birth rates.
Italy is no exception to this trend. In fact, today is a special day for Italian child bearers.
Last month, the Italian Minister of Health announced Sept. 22 as National Fertility Day and started an ad campaign to encourage women to bear children. But unlike the Danish campaign, this one wasn’t in such good humor.
Some ads featured the phrase “Don’t let your sperm go up in smoke” in Italian beneath a picture of a smoldering cigarette, while others showed a woman holding an hourglass with the slogan “Beauty has no age limit. Fertility does.”
Though this campaign had good intentions, these ads don’t come across very well, and many people were quick to denounce them on multiple fronts.
Firstly, some people look to this campaign and find it offensive to those unable to have children. After all, for someone who’s bothered by the fact that they can’t have kids, seeing these sort of ads could be just another reminder of that heartbreak.
But, admittedly while that is tragic, the government’s concern is valid. A country needs children to function, and in this case, concern over the future generation outweighs a bit of emotional distress. But, more valid concerns are the way Italy lacks adequate support for families with children and how its economy isn’t particularly robust.
The Editorial Board interviewed Sara Dallavalle, a grad student here at IU who’s lived much of her life in Italy and has connections to people living there.
“The main issue here is that our generation does not have a lot of job opportunities,” Dallavalle said. “Many young people go to university to spend some time before looking for jobs, but eventually they end up being unemployed.”
She described it as a “vicious cycle — no jobs, no opportunity to buy or rent a house, no money to take care of children,” and the result is that “young people fear not to have enough to sustain a family.”
Many of her female friends on Facebook were furious: “Every girl felt outraged by such a stereotypical campaign.” They particularly resented the “ticking clock symbolizing the expiration date of your reproduction potential.”
“It’s not a question of laziness, or people in their late 20s wanted to be Peter Pan forever, it’s that money is not enough,” Dalavalle said.
This seems to strike the heart of the issue.
Italy doesn’t offer much in terms of child care, and many young people lack the financial stability required to start a family. If they really wanted to encourage people to have children, the Italian government would need to provide support for these families, not just a sense of urgency.
So while we liked the Danish campaign for keeping a humorous tone on a legitimate issue, this Italian Fertility Day oversteps its bounds and goes from being encouraging to intrusive.
Dallavalle put it best when she said, “Overall, I consider this a very poor attempt of raising awareness, an attempt that tried to use young people’s language, but failed to realize the source of young people’s concerns about the future.”
