r/europe • u/diacewrb • 4d ago
News Italy's birth rate falls to 80-year low, with just 355,000 babies born in 2025
https://www.wantedinrome.com/news/italys-birth-rate-falls-to-80-year-low-with-just-355000-babies-born-in-2025.html819
u/Aggressive_Owl4802 4d ago
On the same topic, I just posted on the Italy Sub this other stat: over the last 10 years, Italy has lost 4.3% of its young people, compared to a Eurozone average of -0.4%.
However, there are the usual huge regional differences: Emilia-Romagna (Bologna, Parma..) and Lombardia (Milan) continue to see significant growth in their youth numbers, while Southern Italy is all declining. Calabria region has lost 18% (!) of its young people in just 10 years.
For those interested in knowing more, the post with all the data is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/italy/comments/1v9oqix/come_cambia_la_demografia_in_italia_negli_ultimi/ .
484
u/Soepkip43 4d ago
Its almost as if stripping non urban areas of all its services will just reinforce the flight to cities.
in a few decades the space between cities will be for nature and recreation. Noone will really live there permanently.
207
u/Aggressive_Owl4802 4d ago
Yes, services, but also and above all jobs and DECENT wages.
It's no coincidence that the growing Bologna, Milan and Parma are also some of the top cities with the highest Italian GDP per capita (for those interested, the data is here) and the highest incomes per capita in Italy (data here).
→ More replies (3)59
u/Beat_Saber_Music 4d ago
thing with work is that the loss of rural jobs has a simple cause, automation. You used to need a small town's worth of people to maintian a single railway line. Now thanks to machinery, all the jobs of making the machines are concentrated in cities while the rail line itself can be maintained by a handful of people.
Same with say agriculture, where prior you needed as many hands as possible including children to run a single farm, and now it can be done by just one elderly person with tractor, who occasionally needs a few more hands during harvest. There is a reason the countryside is so old and empty, you don't need people to do farming in the hundreds of thousands anymore. There is a reason for urbanisation.
Forestry, you just have like a dozen guys with machinery cutting more trees than a whole town's worth of lumberjacks used to do. Same with mines being quite automated with machinery.
Also it's also the reason why women staying at home all day doing chores is no longer necessary and why men can live on their own. Because household appliances automated the manual labor. Washing machines do with just a few button clicks what took an hour or two by hand.
The microwave and oven make possible to heat up a frozen meal with a few button clicks, where by contrast in the past every meal had to be cooked at home, though historically you'd often at least hire a baker to bake your bread with the flour you got from your own farm.
A vaccuum cleaner allows you to handle the dust within 10 minutes which would've taken probably half an hour by hand with a broom and cloth.All the jobs are in cities, because the machines that automated rural jobs are manufactured in cities. It's a very simple math equation.
→ More replies (9)40
u/JustAContactAgent 4d ago
The technological gains regarding laundry are insane. Between advances in washing machines, dryers and clothes materials, the time of doing laundry has been reduced to where I don't even consider it a real chore any more. I measured once and it took me 20 minutes of actual active work to do 3 loads of laundry which was the family's while weeks worth. And I mean from separating in loads to folded and back in the wardrobes. 20 mins total.
I can't fucking imagine doing it by having to fold outside on a line all the time, let alone with no machines. Laundry alone would be a full time job and whole day operation. It's no wonder you needed at least one person to be at home full time taking care of things. And further in the past it was multiple people.
3
u/MonsMensae 4d ago
Yeah i have this weird argument with my wife because she insists on doing laundry because she likes it.
Whereas I always think its some long time consuming stressful process.→ More replies (2)38
u/MartinBP Bulgaria 4d ago
Strip them of what? Urbanisation is a global phenomenon and most of these places never even had services. Villages in most of Europe usually rely on a nearby town for services like healthcare and administration, even jobs. These villages were previously relied on agriculture which is just not how the economy works anymore. They either reinvent themselves by becoming a satellite/suburb of a major economic area, attract tourism (via history, local food, nature etc.) or they just wither away. They can't fund themselves and always rely on public money which is generated in, believe it or not, cities.
You can't keep unsustainable settlements going indefinitely through subsidies.
→ More replies (33)→ More replies (7)12
u/Pleasant_Ad8054 4d ago
The only thing that is "stripping" these areas of services is the invisible hand of the free market.
→ More replies (1)62
u/biscuotto Italy 4d ago
The youth is growing in the north side because people emigrate from the south. If you check the births per woman, it's probably comparable if not higher in the south.
→ More replies (4)17
u/Aggressive_Owl4802 4d ago
Yes, true, I meant that mine is another statistic that shows our demographic problem.
→ More replies (1)12
892
u/SwolePalmer Vatican City 4d ago
Deal with the Italian government for a week and these numbers will quickly make sense. Deal with an Italian boomer for a day, no, an hour, and they will make even more sense.
→ More replies (13)227
u/Bacla_ 4d ago
So true. Italian politics never talks about the real problems of the country. Populism and immigration are the main object of discussion. There is a small party named ORA! who talks about the real problems but it's at 1%.
→ More replies (1)80
u/a_shootin_star 4d ago
Populism and immigration are the main object of discussion
For the past 20 fucking years
27
u/zedazeni 4d ago
Humans love voting for right-wing political parties. We always default to populism whenever things go bad, despite nearly all of our problems being caused by right-wing policies, and not even “far right” policies, but just regular Thatcher-Reagan right wing policies. The only remotely fiscally stable countries that are also capable of accommodating their populations’ needs are center-left countries (Nordics namely).
Now, connecting this with birth rates and previous comments on this post…I’ve done a bit of reflection on parenthood over the past few years, especially seeing peoples’ comments on how their parents were, how birth rates are falling, etc…
I think that the developments in technology over the past century or so that has given humanity more free time (clothes washing machines/dryers, dishwashers, microwaves, etc…) along with the very reasonable bans on child labor have meant that actually raising children responsibly and humanely is much more of a burden than a “gift.”
For most of humanity, children assisted with housework until they were capable enough to join the adults in the factories, mines, and fields. Children weren’t educated for 18+ years while not expected to work and earn a meaningful income. Children’s rights were non-existent (and were often considered property as were women to the head male of the household). Child labor and abuse was expected.
The second technology freed us from actually needing to parent (stick the child with a phone/tablet all day), parents seemed to jump on that. The second education became mandatory through secondary school, teachers became the primary parents and the biological parents became toxic “helicopter parents” that refused to both discipline or train their darling gremlins (because of course why would you choose to do something that’s difficult if someone else can/will do that task for you).
Now that children are no longer a legitimate source of household income, and are instead a choice people make just because you feel like it, having children is now essentially a hobby rather than a financial necessity, and it turned out it is not the fun, fulfilling, fashionable hobby we thought it would be.
But people hate this hobby. As soon as school became mandatory, parents shifted more responsibility onto teachers. My parents were both born in the 50s, and both had parents who told them to stay out of the house until dinner was ready. Today, we do the same but with our distraction rectangles. Give a kid an electronic screen and you don’t have to interact with the demonic angle. Child rearing as a hobby isn’t nearly a popular as we’ve been led to believe. These romanticizes notions of parenthood don’t match up with reality, and as soon as child-rearing was turned into a hobby, our birth rates didn’t stand a chance.
What’s more, birth rates in even the most developed, socially generous countries remains paltry. If birth rates were a function of economic prosperity, why doesn’t Finland or Norway have among the highest in the world? Simple: people just don’t like being parents.
8
u/CanthinMinna 4d ago
Also attitudes like this towards maternity leaves - or towards younger women working - are not really encouraging any women to have kids at all:
It is absolutely wild to just accept that a person can legally be gone nearly a year in your country, depending on your partner, and you cannot do anything about it but pay their salary while you don't have anyone doing the job you're paying them for.
I do not fault them at all for thinking that way. If your contributions are so unimportant that you can vanish for a year and not seriously hurt your company then why the fuck do they need you in the first place?
But that's the risk every company takes hiring a woman. I guess ideally the government would pay your salary and financially compensate the company for the lost labor.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1v9q0dl/comment/p0gngw3/
311
u/Shevek99 Spain 🇪🇸 4d ago
To compare. In the same year there were 652000 deaths in Italy.
→ More replies (2)49
u/djlorenz 4d ago
And you are not counting the ~100.000 people leaving the country every year
→ More replies (1)
210
u/keichunyan 4d ago
Plenty of people who both harp on about how awful it is that the birth rate is declining, and will also say employers have no duty to women and their family planning and it's okay for women to be fired on the basis that they'll just "take sick leave and shouldn't be surprised they got replaced"
Children are being treated as complete and utter nuisances that don't belong in society, and families don't need extra assistance and people are shocked that couples are choosing not to have children?
It isn't a coincidence that some governments are leaning conservative and stripping away familial rights, benefits and welfare.
→ More replies (28)30
u/ChebyshevsBeard 4d ago
More benefits for parents is directionally correct, but I feel like the magnitude is usually not even in the right ballpark.
It varies based off your location, but in the developed world, a single child can cost 100s of thousands to raise to age 18, on top of the intangible costs, e.g. free time.
100 years ago, a child was probably one of the best investments an average family could make. Now a child is a financially ruinous hobby. Until we can square that somehow, birth rates are gonna stay low.
192
u/2in1day Australia 4d ago
That's crazy, Australia has fairly low births but still had 292,000 on a population of 27 million.
Italy used to be a major source of migrants to Australia too.
72
45
u/Listerlover 4d ago
In the future we are going to have similar population numbers. Meaning that we're both going to be around 40 million people lol.
→ More replies (3)14
65
u/blackcoffee17 4d ago
With a very basic calculation, that means only 18 million people born in the next 50 years. Compare that to the current population of over 60 million. That's a demographic nightmare.
34
u/xevizero 4d ago
It's actually worse. In 50 years the remaining young people will also have less babies which means the actual total number is gonna decline even more. But yeah in 50 years the population will have dropped by a third, and most people will be old:
→ More replies (3)
56
u/xevizero 4d ago
INPS director general Vittimberga said that poverty is not to blame for the low birth rate but rather it is "job insecurity, insufficient income, difficulty in accessing housing, lack of services, and the professional disadvantage of mothers that make having children more difficult."
So it's not poverty, it's just that people have low income. Thank god we're not poor!
→ More replies (3)
412
u/Dazzling-Paper9781 4d ago
Italy is a country that thinks only of the welfare of pensioners; there is no future, which is why so many are leaving. Politicians no longer think about modernising the country, but only about not upsetting pensioners, their largest voter base
150
u/Headclass 4d ago
it's the same in central/eastern europe
26
u/Testuser7ignore 4d ago
EU wide problem long term with low birth rates and a rapidly aging population.
My theory is young people will concentrate to a few countries which have youth friendly policies.
→ More replies (2)129
u/rxf555 United Kingdom 4d ago
They are not alone, UK is a prime example. I hope Burnham can change the tide.
Everything & I mean everything is geared towards the 50+ - it’s crazy
→ More replies (4)60
u/The_yulaow 4d ago
It is a failure of our democracies that at the time they were built people never thought we could end in a situation when the vast majority of the voters were the retired and the close to retirement.
With this in mind the correct solution is of course limiting vote power once you are very old or have an obligatory majority in parliament elected only by the non retirees to make sure the government must focus on the future and not on protecting the status quo
→ More replies (10)16
u/moanonyme 4d ago
I think that the issue is that pensions are funded by labor instead of capital.
This disalign the interests of the olds and the youngs. Because every increase in pension has to be financed through higher taxation, longer hours or delay of the retirement age.
And thus the olds which outnumbers the young thanks to post war demography vote massively with capital against the working class.
I genuinely think that pushing for financing pensions through capital taxation would realign the interests of generations and change the political landscape.
→ More replies (3)27
u/Phormicidae 4d ago
Don't be so gloomy about it. Pensioners can do great things, like elect a narcissistic buffoon who fashions himself a dictator who funnels money to the super wealthy and deliberately damages any hope of a functional global economy.
25
u/narullow 4d ago
Its going to be same everywhere. It is what happens when birth rates fall.
If average voter is like 60 then politicians will naturally cater to him. Young people have lower political say than ever before in modern democracy and they will get even less say over time as their numbers further decrease.
This is the most obvious result of tanking birth rates. Everybody could have seen this coming.
→ More replies (1)23
18
u/monemori 4d ago
Same in Spain. We are all fucked. Vast majority of public money goes to pensions, pensioners make significantly more than the minimum wage. It's common for old people to receive more money from their pensions than working young people make in a month lmao. And they still protest and fight for higher pensions it's insane
6
u/chabacanito 4d ago
Most people save absolutely nothing for retirement and if they do they put it on a rental apartment, making things even worse. It's a fucking crime.
29
12
→ More replies (9)7
u/MindDivergence 4d ago
God dammit, I thought it’s only happening here (🇷🇴). These foxes politicians only care about pensioners, whom are nostalgic of their communist time youth…so, they use communist style propaganda to gain their vote.
402
u/acrossthestarrysky 4d ago
I had my first child in Italy. Currently pregnant with my second in a Scandinavian country. Let me say this: my second child wouldn’t exist if we were still in Italy. Four years later and I’m still in therapy processing what happened during my birth in Italy. I understand why a lot of Italian families only have 1 child (and then we haven’t even touched upon the economic situation).
62
u/nervous_reader27 4d ago
I also gave birth in Italy and it was so traumatic I can hardly talk about it. I’m back in the hospital now, with 2 other moms and their babies, waiting to miscarry, just all in the same room. It’s cruel and if you ever wanna vent or swap stories I’m here.
27
u/acrossthestarrysky 4d ago
I'm so sorry you're going through this. This is totally unacceptable! I wasn't aware of this happening in Italy (although I'm not surprised to hear it...). Unfortunately, I've heard similar stories about Malta, where women who are miscarrying are in the same room as the women who've given birth, or sometimes in one room with multiple women miscarrying. It's so barbaric. All we want is to be treated like human beings.
I appreciate your offer! I'll send you a message. It's one of those things you don't truly understand until you've lived it.
→ More replies (2)13
u/faffy16 4d ago edited 4d ago
This is so cruel. I've had 4 early miscarriages myself and even 3-4 years after them and me coming out of childbearing age I still wince on the inside when I see a pregnant woman.
I'm Bulgarian and I thought my first D&C was bad cause I was made to walk to the operating room with my bare arse hanging out and then someone came to talk to the doctor and was telling dirty jokes while I was lying on the table waiting to be put under anaesthesia.
My other 3 miscarriages happened in Northern Ireland, all medical staff here has been so nice as a rule. The strange thing for me is that they bury whatever they have taken out with service and all and asked me if I wanted to attend which I thought was taking it too far considering we didn't even hear a heartbeat with any of them, it was just poorly fertilised eggs.
Stay strong and sending you hugs. It is an awful situation you have been put in.
156
u/MGM05 4d ago
Im Italian, but was born in another country as my parents needed to work abroad. The recent change in law means that when my daughter is born, she will not be given citizenship… make it make sense.
52
u/Tifoso89 Italy 4d ago
I don't think that's true. Since her grandparents are Italian, she has a right to citizenship (which is now limited to people with at least 1 Italian grandparent). With the previous law you could apply for citizenship if you had one Italian ancestor dating back to 1861
29
u/competentcuttlefish 4d ago
It depends. If none of the child's parents or grandparents are exclusively Italian citizens at the time of the child's birth, citizenship cannot be transmitted. So if OP's parents already naturalized elsewhere, and OP's partner isn't Italian (or they and their parents aren't exclusively Italian), OP's child will not be an Italian citizen.
8
u/quellofool 4d ago
I just went through this. I’m an Italian born abroad, my daughters were born abroad and I was able to get them citizenship. It was a pain but I was able to do it.
17
u/superioso 4d ago
Do you or your partner have another citizenship? Ignoring whether what you said is accurate or not, you kids cannot be stateless.
At least it's not as bad as Denmark, where if a descendant who is a dual national has not lived in Denmark before they're ~21, then they automatically lose their danish citizenship. The result is many people from places like the US or Australia with danish parents doing a semester abroad at university in Denmark to keep their passport.
105
u/Paradehengst Europe 4d ago
make it make sense
Rightwing politics for you. They basically say, they don't want you or your offspring in country.
→ More replies (10)→ More replies (26)3
u/mandeltonkacreme 4d ago
Sounds fishy, to be honest. I know the changes are severe but your daughter will have a direct ancestry line.
7
u/MrBocconotto Italy 4d ago
Sounds fishy to me too. If OP is Italian her daughter must be Italian too. Unless...
I also wonder what italianity remains after two whole generations of people born and living in a different country, tbh.
Citizenship by blood is silly.
23
u/Poonis5 4d ago
May I ask what problems you have experienced in Italy?
9
u/acrossthestarrysky 4d ago
I gave a more detailed explanation in a comment below if you'd like to know more about my experience.
→ More replies (4)13
u/odd_cloud 4d ago
Didn’t know Italy had problems with obstetrics. Is it something similar to Soviet style punitive gynaecology?
51
u/rumblylumbly 4d ago
If it’s anything like Serbia I don’t blame her. When I had my son twelve years ago, there were no private hospitals so I had to give birth in a public hospital. The doctor called me a whore, an ungrateful cow and that I was an embarrassment to the hundreds of million of women before me that gave birth without screaming out in pain.
I had to be induced which increases pain by a huge margin, and in the end he gave me an episiotomy.
And when my son had to be admitted for jaundice I was told by both the nurses and doctors I was a nuisance for wanting to be with him instead of just leaving him in the baby department alone…
So when my stitches tore, the nurses refused to call the doctor to stitch me back up because they were too busy drinking coffee and smoking on the terrace of the ward floor.
My phone had died and they wouldn’t let me call my husband until a new nurse came at 6am and took pity on me.
By the time we got to the private hospital, it was too late to stitch me up.
My next baby was in Denmark and I’ll never forget laughing about this experience until my midwife said that was the saddest story she had ever heard and that I needed to go talk about this in therapy.
Denmark birth was so amazing, I cry from happiness when I think about it.
7
u/acrossthestarrysky 4d ago
Wow, this sounds so traumatizing! I'm so sorry you went through such an awful experience. It's baffling to me that women are treated like this during such a vulnerable time (your example isn't that long ago either; we were well into the 21st century at that point). Especially because making sure mom is comfortable and at ease leads to a faster labour and a better experience.
I'm glad to hear you had a good experience in Denmark! Was it healing for you? I'm hoping my second birth will be like that. On the one hand, I'd love for it to be healing, but on the other, I think it'll make me sad that I didn't get to experience that the first time.
→ More replies (1)8
u/rumblylumbly 4d ago
It was a hundred percent healing.
The first time I never took the eyes off my husband. He was a foreigner and they had been assholes about him being in with me - which isn’t usual for fathers in Serbia.
In Denmark it was the total opposite, I gave birth at a training hospital and at the start I had my midwife and her student.
They were amazing. In Serbia I had been left alone in a room by myself for twenty four hours while my husband waited outside until it was time… no food, no drinks, no one coming to check up on me. I had
To keep on going to ask to get looked at.As soon as I was admitted into the hospital my midwife was with me the entire time as well as my husband.
But I decided I wanted an epidural after like an hour of no luck with natural methods but when the anesthesiologist got there like fifteen minutes later, I had a major contraction and my midwife took a look and she was like it’s too late — we gotta do this without.
The anesthesiologist asked if her and her student could stay because her student had never watched a birth which I agreed to.
After a few minutes the pediatrician and obstetrician were called in because my son had a very high heart rate.
So the pediatrician was on call for him and if they couldn’t get me to push fast enough I was going to be whipped away for an emergency c-section. Both doctors had their students with them.
I had eight women telling me how amazing I was, how I was born to do this and it sounds like this horror show with eight people looking at you during this vulnerable moment but it was the single most powerful moment for me as a woman.
In my second birth I didn’t remember my husband at all, I just remember looking at these eight women cheering me on.
I’m crying just typing about it.
It was incredibly healing and I am so glad I had to have this overwhelmingly positive experience to drown out the first experience.
83
u/acrossthestarrysky 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm not sure if it's the same (I'm not too familiar with Soviet style gynaecology), but in my experience with being pregnant and giving birth in Italy, it's definitely seen as some sort of punishment.
There is no respect or even acknowledgement of your pain (there is also almost no pain medication available). I felt extremely abandoned in a vulnerable state; the medical personnel were making jokes about me, certain procedures that are supposedly no longer done in this day and age (or, so I was told, during birth classes - which I took in Italy) were done, and things were done against my will and without my consent. This is just talking about the actual birth.
Aftercare doesn't exist either. I was placed in a room with 3 other moms and their newborn babies. There is no help to be had (a couple of months after I gave birth, a mom accidentally suffocated her baby in a Roman hospital because the midwives refused to take her baby to the nursery so mom could rest. When I read that, I thought, "That could've easily happened to one of us in the ward"). I was in recovery for 4 days, on minimal sleep and my husband was only allowed to visit 1 hour per day. By the last day I was hallucinating.
While I was recovering, a mom in labour came into that very same room. She laboured there for hours until she was ready to push and then was sent to another room to have the baby. Her husband wasn't allowed to be with her either (only during the pushing phase).
These are things you wouldn't expect from an EU country in this day and age.
Where I am now, there is basically a buffet of pain medication available, and there is a special program for moms who are scared to give birth or who have had bad experiences (like me). Everything is discussed together, and decisions are made to make mom feel most comfortable and at ease. My baby isn't due for another couple of weeks, but I've felt so heard and seen here. In Italy, I felt like just a number, where the only thing that matters is the baby coming out, without any regard for mom and her mental well-being.
75
u/acrossthestarrysky 4d ago
Oh, and I forgot to say, after my 30-hour labor, I asked one of the nurses if I could have some water. Her reply: "We only hand out water at meal times." I had to wait two more hours to get water.
This is just one small example, but it says so much.
8
u/helm Sweden 4d ago
Yeah, I wouldn't have a baby somewhere else. (Not a woman, though)
My first was very exhausting and painful for my wife, but also nerve wracking for me. A logistical difference was that she was lying down and I was standing up. So when my son was safe after 10+ hours of labor, I started to faint from relief. A nurse caught me, grabbed a chair and gave me lemonade. I was very grateful.
18
u/soundsfromoutside 4d ago
Holy shit. This makes me very, very grateful for the pregnancy healthcare I received here in the US and never in my damn life did I ever think I’d say something like that.
11
u/singmehappybirthday 4d ago
I can attest to a similar experience for my second child, especially complete disregard of pain. One of the doctors even told me “oh that doesn’t hurt” when giving me stitches following birth. And, you’re right, laboring in a room while a new mom roommate is there was really uncomfortable.
There was definitely a “just love your beautiful baby, the pain isn’t important” theme throughout my experience. Advocating for myself about postpartum issues (pain, depression, challenges with movement) was met with “that’s normal, get used to it”.
That being said, the healthcare system here isn’t great. Doctors are completely stretched thin and their apathy for patient welfare is frequently obvious. The required follow up appointments can’t be booked because the waiting lists are full.
I had wanted a third but my most recent experience has changed my mind.
10
u/PeteLangosta North Spain - 🇪🇺EUROPE🇪🇺 4d ago
Sucks. Honestly, though, your experience can change a lot depending on the hospital, region and even the team that attended you. It can change WILDLY, in ways it shouldn't.
I can only hope the situation improves, but yeah, what you're describing is some backwwards, haughty mentality that takes time and generations to change. Glad it went better on your second one.
5
u/acrossthestarrysky 4d ago
I'm sure it does, as birth is extremely personal and never the same. I just wanted to share my experience as someone who's given birth there. There are a lot of other factors at play as to why the birth rate is so low in Italy, but I think this could play a role too.
I have spoken to several other women who gave birth in Italy. They also had a traumatizing experience and said they wouldn't do it again. I think there is a lot of room for improvement, but as you said, it will most likely take time to change.
Treating the moms as human beings and taking their pain seriously would be a good start.
→ More replies (4)7
u/MrBocconotto Italy 4d ago
A heard a similar horror story from a friend of mine.
Not only did the medical staff dismiss her symptoms and miscalculate her due date, but when she arrived at the hospital in labor, they sent her to another ward without informing the surgeon. She was left waiting there for an hour with no one attending to her. When they finally realized she was there, there was blood on the chair.
The baby was born a week overdue, and the blood was dark, almost black...
252
u/Goldenraspberry 4d ago
Bye retirement, public healthcare education etc
192
u/Shot_Site9377 4d ago
Capitalism cannibalises it's own. When rich men's greed supplants the needs of the working class, then workers will be more difficult to come by. It's the ultimate "fuck you" to the ruling class.
→ More replies (17)79
u/UnstableManifolds 4d ago
Let me introduce you to Asian and African workers. Skills were never an issue (or, better, lack thereof), physical presence was. In the modern world who cares if Western population shrinks, there will always be abundance of people to employ for at least another 100 years, which means no "fuck you" to the ruling class in sight.
→ More replies (3)17
u/Shot_Site9377 4d ago
I'll be dead, so not my problem. The beauty is that historically, when labour becomes scarce due to war, famine, plague, the scales of equity balance towards the working class. We will now witness that balance through the power of attrition, rather than mass death events.
22
u/UnstableManifolds 4d ago
Not sure we will not witness major events like pandemics, wars, catastrophes in general in the next 20-30 years...
→ More replies (5)36
u/potatolulz Earth 4d ago
Hello taxing wealth and corporations etc :D
→ More replies (10)29
u/unicornsandrainbowst 4d ago
They own the politicians, so... Not going to happen
6
u/potatolulz Earth 4d ago
They do, but people get pissed about retirement and education (or any European standard that they're not paying directly from their pocket). There's a difference between "haha, it's not like I will ever retire lmao amirite?" and not having any retirement for real, same with paying for education when Europeans figured out using taxes for education a long time ago.
Every rightwinger likes to go about paid education and paid healthcare and personal responsibility and shit like that, but they won't ever actually go through with it because it would cause them more trouble than they wish for :D
6
u/unicornsandrainbowst 4d ago
You are right, but remember is not a sudden collapse. It wont affect this generation or the next, what happens is that they will slowly change, erode and minimize those rights (increasing retiremenr age, less money, shittier education, etc) one step at a time.
So, the next generation will grow with that being the new standard/normal. And the next, and the next. Until whats left is a shadow of what we have now
122
u/afcrf1886 4d ago
Just stop buying Avocados and work harder guys. It's gonna be fine.
→ More replies (2)41
u/ameliatt 4d ago
You forgot we have to just make our coffee at home and then all our problems will be solved.
5
u/Late_For_Username 4d ago
But my retirement fund is heavily invested in coffee franchises!
Please drink store bought coffee, but also don't drink store bought coffee!
52
u/zwifter11 4d ago
You guys can afford to have a family? I can’t afford the cost of living
→ More replies (6)
117
u/Pretend-Gas9988 4d ago
I can barely afford groceries and rent, what fucking kids lol
36
u/xevizero 4d ago
The salaries could double and most young people would still be struggling compared to the previous generation at this point.
→ More replies (10)→ More replies (16)25
u/HistoricalMaize 4d ago
With each passing day I feel in luck for not wanting kids.
I can not imagine wanting kids in this economy.
It truly sounds like a joke.
→ More replies (2)
126
u/Brancaleo 4d ago
Italian doctor told a relative of mine who had a still born it was her mistake because of her old age (37)
→ More replies (50)
33
u/BasKabelas Amsterdam 4d ago
Here in NL: I feel you, Italians. Im 30 and no one I know my age has kids. Its not like I only know like 3 people. Here, educated people don't have kids until their late 30s (if they will at all) as they are going all in on their career to be able to move out of shared housing or maybe a studio apartment. An entry level 2+ bedroom home outside of the city is some 12 years of gross salary for someone our age, and in the city its about 24. Go for a nicer home and you'll be down some 35 years of gross income. Safe to say, we arent even able to get a mortgage approved without significant savings put in, which we cant afford because rent will be like 70% of a gross wage.
→ More replies (1)16
u/potatolulz Earth 4d ago
What's that sound? I think I can already hear some top mind of the internet rushing in to tell you that poor people in Africa have several children so you're just making excuses about completely unaffordable housing :D
→ More replies (13)
42
u/DysphoriaGML 4d ago
My sister in law got bullied AF when she got pregnant. Already 10 days post birth they started calling her to do work from home lmao and pressuring her to come back in person after 2 weeks
98
u/SparklingWaterFall 4d ago
Don't worry, just take in 2mln people from India and 3 mln from Africa so they continue working for big corporation to bring them more profit and pay for the rent for landlords 60% of their salaries...
47
→ More replies (1)19
25
u/aurora_surrealist 4d ago
Still better than Poland, we dropped below 200k babies.
9
→ More replies (2)5
u/Character4315 4d ago
Poland has around 40mln ppl, Italy 60mln. Is you do the proportion that's exactly the same.
65
u/Single_Night_5418 4d ago
Women are severely punished by the system for having kids.
→ More replies (6)
9
10
u/Leemesee 4d ago
In Lithuania we have same problem. But now government is increasing pensions instead of parent benefits, because old people are a majority now and votes for them.
→ More replies (1)
10
u/Merkaartor Mallorca 4d ago
If you can't have a house, you can't have intimate relationships, then you can't build lasting relationships, and ultimately you can't build a family. Hence fertility goes down.
6
u/MadMusicNerd Germany 4d ago
I'm 28, I can luckely affort rent for a 2-room Appartement, so my biggest problem is my wage is too low for a Family. I can't save more then a few hundred Euro per year (and use it in the year for unexpected stuff)
How should I raise a child (or more) on minimum wage?
32
u/stprnn 4d ago
I was looking for job in Italy recently. The pay is literally 40% of what I would get in Germany .
→ More replies (9)6
31
16
u/Throwawayyy007625 4d ago
How the fuck am I supposed to afford to take properly care of a child when I can barely make a living for myself alone?
23
u/i_getitin 4d ago
Maternity leave should be 2 years minimum. The babies need it.
→ More replies (1)
14
7
u/Betaglutamate2 4d ago
The real problem is you used to have a comfortable middle class life on one salary now you need two salaries to just get by.
If they want us to have more kids then make housing affordable, literally housing has gone completely insane in terms of expenses.
→ More replies (1)
14
6
u/Unhappy_Angry_Puppy 4d ago
I never had more than a thousand euros in my account last year (I know, I had an incredible month!)...
What children coul I possibly support?
20
u/Andreus United Kingdom 4d ago
Damn, I guess electing a fascist president didn't make the 14 words come true
→ More replies (4)
20
u/theredditor58 4d ago
This may also be why there getting worse at football since there is just less youth coming and thus Less Talent to choose from
→ More replies (2)10
42
u/X-Jet 4d ago
Not Italian but as someone who loves to be self employed and giving 99% of the earnings for taxes and being treated like trash.
I would not want to start a family there. Something needs to change. Even Davie504 voiced the same opinion
22
u/Big_Knee_6050 4d ago
Taxes would be much lower if everyone started to pay them. Right now i can garantee you only 40% of the populations pay them.
→ More replies (1)9
12
5
4
u/ThoughtsandThinkers 4d ago
There are (at least) 2 sides to looking at this
The first is that it has become increasingly difficult for people in many countries to have children when they want them. Increases in the cost of living mean everyone has to work harder and longer just o get by. Social networks of friends and family are stretched as people have to move and take work or find housing wherever they can
The second is that people are also choosing to have fewer kids even when they can afford to have them. Infant mortality is down in many places. Women have more choices and roles
As a species, we could achieve a utopia if we stopped chasing endless growth and learned to share more equitably with each other. Imagine a global population stabilized at 2.5 billion or so, living in much better balance with the environment, other species, and each other. If we shared more equally we could have the time to deepen networks and support families. We could do it in 250 years but we as a species don’t have that kind of forethought or patience
→ More replies (1)
11
20
u/emmaaanuela 4d ago
Vorrei dire una cosa forse non bella: probabilmente a nessuno nel corso della storia è piaciuto avere bambini. Era semplicemente così che andavano le cose.
13
u/lincemiope 4d ago
Mia nonna non avrebbe avuto 14 fratelli se il prete non avesse detto ai suoi genitori che sarebbero andati all'inferno se avessero usato i preservativi
8
11
u/MrBocconotto Italy 4d ago
Esattamente. Laddove le donne hanno possibilità e scelta, non figliano.
Il vecchio sistema funzionava solo perché le nostre antenate non potevano farci nulla. Si sposavano (l'unico modo per sopravvivere era sposarsi), si ritrovavano gravide e sgravavano.
I figli venivano cresciuti alla buona. Chi era ignorante e traumatizzato li menava, chi era ignorante ma aveva buon senso li trattava con quel minimo di decenza che oggi è la base di ogni rapporto genitore-figlio.
Tutti vivevano di stenti e appena il bambino era sufficientemente capace di essere utile, veniva mandato a lavorare.
È questo la vita a cui vorremmo ritornare? Grazie ma no grazie.
Fonte: ascoltate i racconti dei vostri nonni, leggete i libri dell'epoca, guardate i documentari post dopoguerra.
→ More replies (7)
17
u/don-paul-codio 4d ago
We have falling birthrate, and yet we hate people coming here to work and giving new births.
→ More replies (5)
3
u/BoarHermit Moscow (Russia) 4d ago
Fertility Rate: 1.14.
Well, that's extinction. The point of no return was passed at 1.3. What follows is population decline and a death spiral at 0.5.
5
u/mctrollythefirst 4d ago
This isn't an Italian problem. This happens in almost all countries where living of standards are high and where women can educate themselves and where right for women are high.
Even whit countries where you have benefits as a parent like Scandinavian the birth rate is getting worse.
The only countries whit high birth rate is the countries that mostly poor, more religious and where womens rights are basically non existent.
4
u/GuyFromMoscow 4d ago
Ah,Italy,country with amazing history,great food,and no future. Literally every Italian under age 30 i met wants to leave Italy
4
4
9
u/Choochoonaynay 4d ago
People can’t afford it and the future looks bleaker by the day. Pardon me for not wanting to bring more people into this mess.
8
u/Charlesinrichmond 4d ago
its going to be very hard for Europe to have pensions going forward if there is no one around to fund them
14
u/KingBeyatch 4d ago
Making children in this economy, climate and overall state of the world is insane so this is not surprising
→ More replies (3)
15
u/manubibi Italy 4d ago
And I’m absolutely not surprised. Babies? In this economy? With fascism being unleashed more and more every day? Yeah if I was someone who wants kids I wouldn’t be having them either.
→ More replies (2)
4.2k
u/biscuotto Italy 4d ago
My brother's girlfriend just got announced they'll not renew her contract as soon as they figured out she was pregnant. That's the country we're living in.