Abstract
This contribution aims to provide an analysis of the debate on maternal and child welfare in post-World War ii Italy in the broader context of the building of social citizenship in the brand-new Italian Republic. In the perspective of path dependency, the research shows how democratic welfare in this domain has been conditioned by the gendered and cultural assumptions of different political visions, the legacy of Fascism, the influence of the Church, and new psychological knowledge about children.
In Western countries in the aftermath of World War ii, children’s well-being and, by extension, the quality of motherhood, became a topic of political and social debate perhaps as never before. The ravages of war had introduced a context in which politicians were acutely aware of the importance of children as an asset for the rebuilding of the nations, and Italy was no exception. The improvement of the material and moral living conditions of families and children not only arose as one of the fundamental prerequisites for the reconstruction of the new democratic state but was also considered as a vital component of a recalibrated post-war social citizenship.1 However, despite the maternalistic and familistic rhetoric that informs debates (of whatever political colour), welfare innovations in those fields were neither straightforward nor obvious. The debate on maternal and childhood interventions intersected wider questions about the building of social citizenship in the Italian Republic, such as: what role should the state play in the construction of welfare? Which subjects should be entitled to the aid and protection of the state? What role should the voluntary sector have to play, and what degree of autonomy should be granted to voluntary agencies? These fundamental questions touched upon some major and controversial issues of the post-war societies: the tension between the equality of men and women in the rebuilding of post-war families; the mother’s place in the labour market; the responsibilities in childcare.2
This article analyses the debate on public and private involvement in maternity protection and childcare among male and female politicians and experts, and the way they interconnect and shape each other in the broader context of the building of social citizenship in the brand-new Italian Republic. Exploring some significant moments and topics (such as the constitutionalization of mothers’ and children’s rights, the reorganization of maternity and childcare provision, concerns related to illegitimate children and single mothers), it aims to show how democratic welfare in this domain was conditioned by a number of factors: gendered and cultural assumptions about family, work, and childcare; the legacy of Fascism; the influence of the church; and political interests and divisions. A complex path that showed a lot of ambiguity, and in which the rights of women and children were not necessarily aligned in the acquisition of full social citizenship.
1 Maternity Protection and Childcare in the Constituent Assembly (1946–1947)
The first and most significant moment in the public debate on interventions for maternity protection and childcare took place in the Assembly charged with drawing up the Constitution of the newly formed Italian Republic. The work of the Constituent Assembly, elected on 2 June 1946, began on 25 June 1946. The Constitution came into force on 1 January 1948. The inclusion of clauses to protect maternity and childhood was part of a wider transnational phenomenon which, in the post-war years, also affected France (1946) and West Germany (1949), among other European countries.3
In the Italian constitutional debate, possible measures in support of motherhood and childhood were just fleetingly touched upon in the discussions on the entitlements to social assistance; however, they were more fully addressed in the debate on economic and social guarantees for families. Prominent debates focussed on how the meaning of motherhood, family and childcare had to be interpreted, and on the boundaries between family and state. The main parliamentary reports were drafted by three women: the Christian Democrat (dc) deputy Maria Federici,4 the socialist Lina Merlin,5 and the communist Teresa Noce.6 The latter gave remarkable prominence to special provisions for mothers and children alike, within the broader framework of benefits for the formation of the family. Key to Noce’s thought was the affirmation of motherhood as a social function recognized by the state, which had a duty to arrange appropriate socio-economic, health, and welfare interventions, in the collective and national interest.7 Motherhood was therefore a social and collective matter, just like childcare, as children represented the future of the nation; this concept entailed the development of welfare and educational measures for children and adolescents, regardless of their civil or social status.8 As Noce pointed out, only by effectively granting women and children access to essential rights, such as health, education and social care, could the family be fully established. Within this debate, Noce asserted that Parliament should not limit itself to statements of principle, but that the implementation of specific services should be included in the Constitution. Her ideas clearly contrasted with the prevailing attitudes in the Assembly, which limited its ambition to the outlining of general principles in order to provide clearer direction for future legislation.
In Merlin’s report, the protection of maternity and childhood was integrated into a more general framework, asserting the personal rights of women and children to a minimum subsistence level and to socio-economic assistance. The Socialist deputy also defined motherhood as a social function and linked its protection to the promotion of gender equality in labour. Childcare was considered as a public obligation, without distinction between legitimate and illegitimate birth, but merely when the “spontaneous initiative of the family or employers” was lacking.9
Federici’s report was based on a family-ethical vision of social life. She questioned the appropriateness of treating hygiene, work, maternity, and childhood-related problems in the debate on socio-economic guarantees for families, warning that this would lead to the disappearance of the family itself as a political topic.10 The Christian Democrat deputy developed a structured programme of family policies (e.g., family wage) within a framework of guarantees concerning the right to work, property and social security. The proposal contained references to the right to healthcare and social welfare, and it also advocated guarantees for the protection of working mothers or breadwinners, as well as “moral” interventions for children at risk. However, all these interventions aimed at protecting the cohesion of the family unit should not, Federici insisted, “make the mistake of considering the individual as a social agent rather than the family, which remains the state’s intermediary for the protection of maternity, childhood and youth”.11 Federici was quite perplexed by her colleagues’ insistence on defining motherhood as a social function. She considered this concept “definitely new”, but she had to second-guess its meaning, saying “We could talk about the social function of the family, but not of motherhood per se”.12 Federici’s report showed how the vision of Catholic female politicians adhered to the words of Pio xii, when he stated that “the woman cannot see or fully understand all the problems of human life except through the family”, because God “has shaped woman for the purpose of the maternal mission”.13 From this point of view, the social function of motherhood cannot be accepted, as it is exclusively linked to its biological value.14
Christian Democrats were not the only ones to reject the idea of motherhood as a social function. Enrico Molè, deputy of the Partito Democratico del Lavoro, also considered it a dangerous idea, giving rise “to political interpretations concerning motherhood as in the fascist period”.15 The ensuing debate was in fact characterized by the concerns of many deputies about an excessive state interventionism, in light of the negative legacy of fascist demographic and family policies. Amintore Fanfani (dc) made himself an interpreter of the various trends within the discussion, proposing that the Republic should recognize the protection of mothers and children as a national interest.16 However, he pointed out that, although the Constituent Assembly members had a lively interest in committing future legislators to grant adequate care to mothers and children, they should avoid the risk “of establishing a kind of state child-rearing”.17 For this reason, he proposed that childcare institutions could be “created or integrated, where necessary, by the State”.18 This proposal was supported by the socialist Gustavo Ghidini, but criticized by Teresa Noce. In her view, the term “created” sounded pleonastic and limiting, given that “if in the Constitution it is recognized that something already exists, the need for state intervention decreases”.19 Other politicians, such as Francesco Marinaro (Blocco Nazionale della Libertà), feared that the provision of resources by the state was too costly from a financial point of view.
As regards the determination of who should be entitled to protection, Fanfani and his party colleague Giuseppe Togni spoke out against all references to the civil status of women and children, because this could have been “seen essentially as an encouragement to the creation of illegitimate families”.20 Ghidini, instead, was in favour of the introduction of a reference that would make explicit that assistance would be granted without distinctions of civil status, in particular for illegitimate children. New-borns, so he argued, “should all be placed on the same level”.21 Since existing protections for unmarried mothers and illegitimate children were inadequate, Noce claimed that the Constitution had to guarantee “a minimal protection” by the State, so that “estranged children” did not end up entangled in “vice and delinquency”.22 However, that did not imply the “equalization of rights between legitimate and illegitimate children”.23
This theme was later revisited as part of a broader and more complex debate on the definition of the identity of the family and how the family related to the state.24 The proposal of Nilde Iotti was aligned with Noce on the definition of motherhood as a social function25 On the one hand, her proposal aimed at constitutionalizing the social value of motherhood, but on the other, it also asserted the rights of children and adolescents to physical and intellectual development, without any differentiation based on civil and social status. This statement referred particularly to equality between legitimate and illegitimate children. Camillo Corsanego’s (dc) counterproposal instead merely granted protection to those who were born out of wedlock.26 Because the political views on the legal rights for illegitimate children were not aligned, the Assembly decided that the issue had to be settled by ordinary law. The debate on illegitimacy, which cannot be recreated here in all its complexity but in which clearly nineteenth-century arguments resounded, especially about paternity investigation,27 finally produced the conservative formula of Art. 30. This enshrined the duty and right of parents to support and educate their children and limited public engagement to a context of clear parental incapacity. Parental duties were expressly extended to children born out of wedlock; however, “legal and social protection” granted by the law needed to be “compatible with the rights of members of the legitimate family”.28
Another controversial topic addressed by the Assembly was the question of whether youth protection should or should not be considered as a public responsibility. A proposal regarding this matter, written by Corsanego with Iotti and Aldo Moro (dc29), prompted a backlash, once again related to the fear of a totalitarian intervention by the state. As argued by Ottavio Mastrojanni (Fronte dell’Uomo Comune) with the support of Giorgio La Pira (dc), the inclusion of a specification regarding young people would have allowed the state to “intervene in the education and upbringing of youth according to political criteria” that could “end up in conflict with family freedom”.30
Article 31 of the Constitution finally ended by ensuring special protection for maternity, childhood, and youth, without civil, economic, or social distinctions. The text on which the deputies converged, “The Republic protects maternity, childhood and youth by promoting the institutions necessary for this purpose”, seemed to grant a subsidiary role to the state, especially in light of the suppression of a previously proposed hendiadys in which the Republic guarantees protection “by establishing and promoting the institutions”. According to Meuccio Ruini (Gruppo Misto), this indicated that the forces against a marked state interference had prevailed: “Is it really fair?” he asked, before continuing resignedly, “So be it; we won’t fight for that”,31 a statement that clearly underlines the compromise with which the leftist and social-liberal parties agreed. This compromise, in my opinion, was a result of a still myopic underestimation among many (male) deputies of the value of any social intervention not strictly connected with the field of work.
One topic on which the Christian Democrats and the Leftist women deputies converged was the inclusion of special guarantees for mothers in the workplace. This issue, it should be noted, was not openly debated until the final discussion in the Plenary Assembly led to the affirmation of equality between male and female workers, although the outcome retains a margin of ambiguity in terms of striking a balance between work and family life.32 Article 37 (“Working women are entitled to equal rights and, for comparable jobs, equal pay to men. Working conditions must allow women to fulfil their essential role in the family and ensure appropriate protection for the mother and child”33) refers to a vision of equality that embraces traditional roles within families; a vision that was common to the dc and to the pci, or at least, to the male politicians of both parties. Given that work is the guiding principle of the Italian constitution, and is, as Pietro Costa pointed out, “the point of balance … between freedom and responsibility, between rights and duties”,34 the unsolved theoretical and political contradictions inherent in this ambiguity risk undermining the acquisition of full social citizenship for women.
The convergence of female deputies on the working women issue did not, in any case, end with the Constituent Assembly debate but led to one of the few shared reforms of the early Cold War era: Law no. 860 of 26 August 1950.35 The new law ‒ the result of heated discussions and not a few compromises, particularly in the case of the Christian Democrat female deputies36 ‒ continued to operate in the field of protection rather than the promotion of working women, and showed similarities with the former fascist law of 1934. Motherhood was once again predominantly associated with illness and risk, as the result of a predominantly male vision of the female body. Nonetheless, the law introduced some important and – from a European perspective – even advanced innovations. Motherhood protection was now extended to agricultural workers and to public and cooperative employees. Besides a clear ban on the dismissal of pregnant women or women who had recently given birth, the new law decreed a compulsory period of maternity leave of three months before and eight weeks following childbirth, and a daily allowance amounting to 80 per cent of the woman’s salary.37 It also fostered the creation of company or intercompany nurseries with trained staff, as an alternative to the lactation rooms strongly contested by the female workforce.38
The implementation of the new law was, in any case, highly contested by employers, to the extent that, within a few months, new measures were needed to reaffirm the protection against dismissal and to prevent ambiguous interpretations that allowed employers to circumvent employees’ rights.39 One of the most disregarded provisions was the institution of company nurseries, foreseen for companies employing at least thirty women, aged up to fifty years old and married.40 The addition of this final marriage-status stipulation, absent from the previous fascist regulations, proved particularly harmful as it increased dismissals of women who were about to get married.
2 A Controversial Topic: Maternal and Childcare Organization Reforms
In the context of increased public intervention in social security and healthcare, specific measures in support of maternity and childhood were undoubtedly linked also to the more general debate on the identity and shape of the renewed Italian welfare system. This was complicated by the legacy of Fascism, and characterized by legislative stratification, the overlapping involvement of multiple bodies, conflict between public and private sectors, and a badly defined relationship between social insurance, social welfare, and healthcare. This (non)system, which was never entirely fixed, resulted in inefficiency and the waste of financial resources, as demonstrated also in the domain of our own analysis. In the matter of public welfare, the Ministry of the Interior and the newly formed Alto Commissariato per l’Igiene e la Sanità Pubblica (High Commission for Hygiene and Public Health, acis) were the government departments with most responsibility for maternal and child health and welfare. Additional services were provided by the Ministry of Work and Social Insurance, which had powers of supervision over the laws relating to the protection of working women and children; the Ministry of Public Education, which supervised, among others, preschools, and schools for the disabled; and the Ministry of Justice, which assumed responsibility for delinquent children through the Juvenile Courts. In addition, several of the national organizations that had been created under Fascism – to provide, e.g., aid for orphans and to see to the physical and moral education of the younger generations – were mostly maintained under the Christian Democratic governments, which converted them into political fiefdoms for reasons related to consensus and clientelism. In the first half of the 1950s, besides the Provinces and Municipalities, 23 national public bodies, 76 municipal assistance bodies (eca) and about 770 semi-public assistance institutions (ipab) had prerogatives in childcare. While public expenditure for child welfare at the same time amounted to over 20 billion lire, this figure was inadequate and produced mediocre results, also because it was dispersed into so many different streams.41 For the first ten years after the war, investments in maternal and child policies remained low, in part due to the weakened condition of the state budget but also for what has been defined as a long-term “limited [political] vision based on an occupational approach, failing to qualify as an integral part of a social security system”.42 First research shows that from the second half of the 1950s onwards, and even more so in the 1960s, investments in childcare increased constantly, although they remained decidedly lower than those in social security.43 Investments in maternal health and welfare were far less widespread, however. If the centralization of childcare under the fascist regime had kept private initiatives within certain limits, the aftermath of World War ii saw an abnormal rise in the number of private (mostly Catholic) institutes for childcare: the private sector came to be represented by no fewer than 3,200 institutions.44 For political reasons, several Catholic institutions were partly subsidized or benefitted from preferential treatment by the centrist government: first of all, the Vatican agency Pontificia Opera di Assistenza (poa).45
In terms of the reform of maternal and child welfare provisions, one of the most important and controversial topics was certainly the maintenance of the Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia (onmi).46 This parastatal agency, created by the fascist regime in 1925, had been charged with an overwhelming responsibility: the onmi had to provide health and welfare services for needy mothers and children under six years of age, and social services for children between the ages of six and eighteen years who were physically or mentally disabled, neglected or delinquent. The onmi exercised its functions through its own structures (Case della madre e del bambino [Mother and Baby Centre], maternal and paediatric counselling centres, nurseries, canteens, summer colonies) and with the aid of the existing maternal and child-welfare institutions, both public and private; over which it also had supervisory powers. Although the onmi embraced the modern concepts of social welfare, its purposes and principles still very much bore many traces of the fascist doctrine out of which it had grown. For this reason, the survival of the onmi was questioned by politicians and professionals from social work and medicine.
In the post-war years, the onmi underwent a troubled transition period due to financial and organizational difficulties.47 From the end of July 1945, it was placed under the supervision of acis, the creation of which had been welcomed by the Left as a first step towards a reform of state healthcare.48 The transition from the onmi to acis could have opened up the possibility for the institution to carve out a decisive role for itself in the implementation, first of all, of a social-health policy, particularly regarding women’s health, a field substantially neglected by state policies, and, secondly, in the fight against child mortality, which represented the greatest post-war urgency. The onmi, however, was also intent on reclaiming its own tradition as a social care body and demanded a return to Ministry of the Interior supervision, as had been the case under Fascism.49 This stance was probably linked to the onmi’s fears of being absorbed by acis or by a future Ministry of Health.50 Such fears were partly justified by uncertainties regarding the maintenance of the onmi that permeated the dc itself in the aftermath of the war. Minesso has traced these uncertainties back to the wider dilemma over the role of the state in social welfare that pervaded the majority party in this period.51 Repeated attempts to resolve this dilemma – as in the case of the onmi – came down in favour of a centralizing dirigisme also in the social care domain. This maintained a contradictory balance with the non-state sector with a view to managing the influence of the church, given its historically consolidated interests in this field.52
While the Constituent Assembly debate was taking place, several experts and politicians attended the Conference for the Studies of Social Welfare under the auspices of the Ministry of Post-War Assistance and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, held in Tremezzo (in the province of Como) in September 1946. As has been pointed out, the Conference was a unique event in which the theme of social care was examined in all its complexity beyond contingent needs, in the light of the lessons learned from foreign experiences; all this in a friendly atmosphere, despite the diversity of political interpretations.53 An entire section of the event was devoted to childcare. The role of the onmi in the future welfare state was addressed in particular by Doctor Piero Malcovati, whose position reflected the views of the Italian Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Malcovati proposed that the body could be retained, if de-fascistized in methods and objectives. In his opinion, the onmi could play a key role as a specialized technical, sanitary, and social institution. It would be both the “driving force” and the “direct emanation of all those bodies […] dealing, in various ways, with maternal and childcare”.54 Two months later, the Italian Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology returned to the issue, with proposals for the democratisation and technical reorganization of the body. According to Malcovati, onmi reforms were hindered by “the invulnerable fortress of the [onmi] central offices” and its “all-powerful officials, animated by a centralizing and self-centred mentality”, despite the requests for renewal that came from its own local federations.55
In the same period, among other influential voices, the journal of the Health Insurance National Institute (inam), I problemi dell’assistenza sociale, also argued for keeping the onmi, provided its action was exercised “outside and above the politics of any party”.56 While no official pronouncements from the Tremezzo Conference argued for the dissolution of the onmi, stances in favour of its retention were widely criticized by certain individual participants. Although the onmi representatives offered several reassurances, the discussions evinced “a general sense of unease, one could almost say distrust” about any genuine desire on the part of the agency to take on a democratic identity.57
Eventually, the Christian Democrat government chose a centralist option, that allowed the survival of the onmi, unimpeded by the Left parties, who in any case did not insist on its suppression. The onmi Central Council was recomposed in 1950.58 From this moment on, the body narrowed its focus to maternity and early childcare, partly owing to financial considerations.59 Maternità e Infanzia, the official journal of the onmi, claimed the need for specialization of the services, focussing on the expansion of “Case della madre e del bambino, counselling centres, nurseries, canteens, facilities for unmarried mothers, delivery rooms”.60 Efforts were in fact made to provide more centres, but they remained unevenly distributed across Italy and were clearly of an insufficient number relative to the number of potential users.61 The onmi journal also pleaded for more training for its staff, in particular its health assistants and counselling doctors. During the 1950s, where the financial resources allowed, general practitioners were gradually replaced by specialists. The onmi’s decision to focus on early childhood was contested, moreover, by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Destitution, established in 1950 with cross-party support. The Inquiry denounced as too limited the onmi activities related to maternity and infancy, condemned as inadequate the moral and material assistance provided to abandoned and juvenile delinquent children, which should have been one of its priority target groups in accordance with the law.62
The onmi’s ambition to become a reference point in maternal and infant healthcare continued, nevertheless, to clash with the needs of a country in which “the transition from an economy of war and scarcity to well-being and consumer society” was “far from widely investing the different territorial areas and social classes”.63 The research of a qualitative evolution continued to permeate the debate within the onmi throughout the 1950s, as shown by the establishment of medical-psycho-pedagogical centres for the mental health of children,64 and the gradual opening to include social work.65 Nevertheless, the pace of innovation remained tied to financial resources, on the management of which, incidentally, various questions were raised by the Court of Auditors.66 The gap between ambition and achievement is also demonstrated by the slow progress made by the onmi services for marriage counselling, started in the second half of the 1950s but with no more than 15 sections established throughout the whole of the national territory by the late 1960s.67 Another example was its so-called ‘natural childbirth preparation centres,’ first established in 1956 after the acquisition of papal consent.68 The establishment of these centres was seen by the onmi as an opportunity to draw closer to patients in big cities, whose numbers were dwindling,69 but the intense propaganda for this initiative created a striking contrast to the conditions under which the majority of poor mothers continued to give birth, as noted in the parliamentary interventions by Lina Merlin.70
The substantial disengagement of the onmi towards older children and the apparent incapacity of the centrist government to enact a global reform of maternal and childcare organization led to an inevitably predominant role for the private sector, with the result of perpetuating the institutionalization of childhood. Despite the debate that arose from the Inquiry into Destitution, the confining of needy, orphaned, illegitimate, abandoned, or disabled children to private institutions (a practice to which public bodies, including the onmi, increasingly resorted) remained the norm. Institutionalization itself practically went unquestioned until the 1960s, except in rare cases, regardless of the publication, internationally, of several psychological studies about the negative consequences of institutionalization on child development.71 This attitude stemmed also from a precise political vision. As was stated on the pages of Maternità e Infanzia, the state was not supposed to “take the place of private welfare and educational initiatives, which are a sign of our civilization”.72 The development of private childcare institutions was considered “natural”, part of the “liberal tradition” and of the “human and Christian sensitivity of us Italians”.73 By contrast, “children entrusted to bodies promoted by the state […] would necessarily suffer from a cold, bureaucratic, colourless approach, if not vitiated by political purposes”.74 As a result of this approach – stemming, as we have seen, from the rejection of the body’s fascist past by the new Christian Democratic leadership – discussions within the onmi on child institutionalization were for a long time centred exclusively on the need to guarantee greater public financial means to private institutions. The organizational and educational methods were not called into question, in order not to go against the traditions of these institutions. Whilst taking care not to challenge their autonomy, the most engaged Christian Democrats in the field of childcare, such as the deputy Lodovico Montini, made efforts to reform the methods of private institutions on the basis of modern educational and psychological theories, but these efforts proved mostly fruitless.75
The choice to allocate a large part of the available funds to the institutionalization of poor children, rather than to subsidies or social services, led to the growth of a system which was inclined to perpetuate itself, thanks also to the fact that the definitions of orphan and abandoned child were very flexible. For example, the children of widowed mothers were considered orphans, and state bodies such as the National Organization for the Assistance of Orphans of Italian Workers (enaoli) chose institutionalization rather than granting subsidies to mothers to take care of their own offspring; moreover, many children said to be abandoned were kept in institutions, for shorter or longer spells, by families who were unable to provide for their subsistence. This system results in a commodification of children, which was not questioned until the rise of the 1968 protest movements. From that period onwards, a new sensibility arising against institutionalization resulted in protests and inquiries that showed the terrible conditions in which most institutionalized children lived.76
Over ten years earlier, from the second half of the 1950s onwards, the shortcomings of the onmi had begun to grow more and more into a matter of political debate and confrontation. The left-wing parties, especially, considered the onmi as the surviving embodiment of an inefficient, bureaucratic, and centralized interwar welfare system. Despite the introduction of several bills, the onmi was only partially reformed in 1966, without a proper resolution of its main weaknesses. After the negative impact of a series of scandals in the 1970s about the institutionalization of children, the onmi was suppressed in 1975; its functions were delegated to the regions, as part of a broader process of the decentralization of welfare services.
3 Between Moralizing and Care: Single Mothers and Illegitimate Children
The most prominent example of a politically charged and blame-oriented debate, was, as noted before, the question of single mothers and illegitimate children. The preservation in these years of the traditionalist model of the family was strenuously defended by the church but endorsed also by the Left, particularly the pci, for legitimation purposes.77 The constitutionalization of the right to assistance for children born out of wedlock led several politicians from different parties to present reform projects. However, the affirmation of children’s rights in these proposals negatively affected unmarried mothers, whose status was scrutinized in even more emotive and moralistic terms.
Aid to illegitimate children, and to those unrecognized or recognized only by their mother, was entrusted by law to the provinces, under the supervision of the onmi.78 The different forms of assistance resulted not only in fragmentation and discontinuity, but also an even greater stigmatization of children born out of wedlock whose fate often was determined by the care they received from specialized institutions or wet nurses. In the aftermath of World War ii, illegitimate births became a matter of political concern, linked mainly to the high child-mortality rate. This rate declined in the years immediately after the conflict, decreasing from 181.6‰ in 1943 to 119.7‰ in 1948, finally settling at 69.7‰ in 1960. However, a considerable gap remained with the mortality rate of legitimate children, which fell from 112.5‰ to 43.6‰ in the same years. These figures also represented a hiatus between Italy and the more advanced European nations.79
Maternal recognition rates (paternal ones were minimal) varied significantly depending on the economic and socio-cultural contexts. The administrators of the foundling hospitals (brefotrofi) in the immediate post-war period focused their attention mainly on the mother-child bond, defined at that time mostly in hygienic-sanitary terms, such as the need to promote breastfeeding, which was seen as propaedeutic also for the purposes of creating a tie between mother and child. This perspective placed the child at the centre of care, thus subordinating the role of mothers and the meagre interventions on their behalf. As noted by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Destitution, the law largely ignored the problems of single mothers and the related social problems, and thus even contributed to the vulnerability of unmarried mothers in a profoundly conservative socio-cultural context.80 Foundling hospitals equated “residential care with confinement”, paying no attention to the reintegration of mothers into working life.81 The grants for the mothers who recognized their children were insignificant and differed across regions.82 These imbalances were even more significant when compared to the subsidies given to wet nurses or to institutions to cover their expenses.83 The help given to single mothers was deliberately curtailed for moralistic reasons, because many experts thought that a high subsidy would have turned unmarried mothers into women “kept” by the State, thus preventing the establishment of legitimate families.84
In most cases, the interwar criteria upon which the residential care for mothers was based, remained unchanged and were above all linked to their so-called moral rehabilitation. This often involved the physical and psychological confinement of mothers through countless forms of prohibition; mortification of individuality through the imposition of uniforms; the assignment of manual work. Because of hygienic-sanitary concerns, living spaces in the hosting institutions mostly maintained a cold and aseptic character; moreover, the daily lives of mothers and children continued to be strictly separated. Maternal and childcare was mainly entrusted to unqualified personnel, mostly nuns. Often, single mothers were tolerated just as wet nurses and were in many cases forced to feed other children to compensate for the costs of their own maintenance.85 In order to resolve these issues, the Tremezzo Conference advocated the establishment of family shelters in addition to foundling hospitals. The numbers both of shelters and foundling hospitals, however, remained insufficient.86 Starting from 1952 and merely on an experimental basis, the onmi hired some social workers to aid unmarried mothers.87 Too few were hired, however, to have any meaningful impact on welfare programmes.88
Two different bills had been introduced on the threshold of the fifties, to try to tackle the problems of the assistance offered to illegitimate children (and their mothers), but neither enjoyed any real measure of success. In 1949, Bianca Bianchi (Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano) proposed the devolution of all responsibilities for childcare to the onmi, regardless of civil status.89 A second bill meanwhile, submitted in 1950 by the Christian Democrat deputies Erisia Gennai Tonietti and Giovanni Battista Migliori, aimed by contrast to maintain on behalf of the onmi provincial jurisdiction over illegitimate children and even to extend it to abandoned pregnant women, regardless of their marital status, and to abandoned legitimate children.
Bianchi’s proposal conceived care in the broader perspective of the reform of parental responsibility, in the spirit of the Constitution. Her text strived towards welfare services, contained harsh criticisms against the inefficiency of foundling hospitals, drew attention to failures in terms of health and hygiene, and pointed to the deplorable state in which the children lived, and to the abuse of wet nurses. Instead, Gennai Tonietti and Migliori’s proposal was based on the idea that “the issue of protection of illegitimate children” was “first of all, a welfare problem and […] consisted mostly in perfecting welfare laws”.90 The bill aimed at extending the period during which assistance could be offered to single mothers. Provinces were called upon to establish special shelters for mothers and (legitimate and illegitimate) children in need, in addition to the existing institutions for pregnant single mothers. These shelters would accommodate children until they were of school age. Their proposed law also limited wet nursing to exceptional cases, with the intention of promoting foster care with a view to adoption. If a single mother had the resources to raise her child at home, she would receive a layette and a monthly subsidy. According to some experts, the section of the bill on the creation of shelters was so vague that it raised concerns about the possibility of protracted institutionalization. Institutionalization of any duration was deemed undesirable because it seemed merely a protective measure that did not address the need to reintegrate temporarily assisted women back “into normal working life”.91
why does the burden of guilt have to lie immediately and exclusively on the woman, on the weakest one who not only needs to bear the physical weight of the pregnancy but also the psychological one? […] Where then is a fair balance in the attribution of respective responsibilities if ‒ by virtue of an iron law ‒ recognition must be carried out only by that unfortunate woman who is forced, even against her will, to give her name and tie a creature to her destiny, which has fallen upon her unwanted, deprecated and feared indeed? Does one perhaps act with a fair sense of justice by imposing a provision of law that even foresees the imprisonment of the mother who did not intend to obey, while granting the father a convenient life in the shadow, because in this country, with the exception of scarcely applied cases, the search of paternity is not allowed?95
Considering all these criticisms, Bianchi withdrew the bill in 1951.
Both bills, regardless of the respective positions on the political spectrum, showed their limits in conceiving assistance to illegitimate children mainly in terms of institutionalization, neglecting maternal care, or making it conditional on punitive criteria. Once again, the single mother continued to be seen as a mere recipient of (very poor) assistance in function of the well-being of the children, not as actors with their own rights and entitlements. Between 1947 and 1954, seven different bills were presented regarding the status of illegitimate children and the assistance that should be made available to them, but all without results. Such inaction has often been traced back to the influence of the most conservative Catholic hierarchies, of which poa represented the fulcrum. Indeed, in those years poa was at the forefront in opposing any legislative reform aimed “directly or indirectly to an equalization of the situation of legitimate and illegitimate” children and instead stood up for the moralization of family life.96 The Vatican agency was an essential participant in the field of social welfare, an agency that could rely on a large network of influential Christian Democrat politicians, such as Maria Pia Dal Canton or Antonio Azara, public administrators, and other experts for lobbying. It seems, however, that the policy vacuum in this field cannot be attributed solely to the poa’s resistance to change. In the field of childcare provisions, e.g., the various elements of the reform of assistance suggested by the poa (such as simplification of adoption procedures, implementation of family homes for single mothers and their children, the “radical reform of internal regulations and of educational system of foundling hospitals”) do not differ substantially from those of their secular counterparts.97 Infighting in the dc and clientelist interests seem, in many cases, to have played a not insignificant role in burying any attempt at reform in this as in other areas of social welfare.98
While the births of illegitimate children in Italy decreased from 43,608 in 1945 to 22,744 in 1960,99 official guidelines on illegitimate births raised concerns on the psychological development of abandoned children, owing to the spread of the theories of René Spitz and John Bowlby, all of which led to a gradual integration of psycho-pedagogical elements in medical-social approaches. In the light of these studies, the effectiveness of the foundling hospital system was called into question.100 Calls arose for the transformation of foundling hospitals into children’s homes – without making distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate children – but these voices remained unheeded.101 According to Bernini, the penetration of Bowlby’s theories in Italy was limited and was mediated by a traditionalist vision of the family, meaning that moral considerations prevailed over psychological ones.102
In the absence of any meaningful reforms from the legislative framework, it is true that the political and societal debate on how to care for illegitimate children in Italy continued to follow an ambiguous path. Activity in this area was characterized by a seeming willingness to accept remaining inequalities, strict budgetary limits, autonomy of provincial administrators, and the inalterability of local traditions. Things started to change, however, in the early 1960s, when the attachment theory started to gain momentum in the Italian technical and political debate, paradoxically at a time when it was prompting a backlash in many other countries.103 Unquestionably, in Italy too these theories shifted the axis of the mother-child union even further towards the interests of the child. This debate eventually led to the introduction in 1967 – with the endorsement of Christian Democrat and the parties on the Left – of full adoption in the best interests of the child. Although representing an admirable step towards abandoning the practice of the institutionalization of children, the law once again neglected to take into consideration the psychological and social-economic conditions of single mothers.104 Furthermore, the spread of Bowlby’s theory increased the stigma on unmarried mothers, combining moral prejudices with scientific prejudices. In the 1960s, much as had happened in England in the 1950s,105 single motherhood was frequently pathologized in Italian public discourse, wherein the notion of the “lost women” was often combined with that of the “unfit mother”.106
4 Conclusion
Italian republican welfare has been identified as a complex mix of subsidiarity, ambivalent familism, and clientelism.107 There was a limited development of family benefits, even in comparison to other Christian Democratic welfare states such as France. In the field of social welfare for mothers and children, innovations in the post-war years were very limited. Several factors contributed to this immobilism. Ideologically speaking, the influence on centrist governments of the “church’s dystopian view of modernity”108 as it relates to gender relations and family, as well as the ambivalence between conservative morality and the demands for equality from the leftist parties, all contributed powerfully to hindering reforms. Indeed, in the post-war years, the use of maternalist rhetoric by female politicians ‒ despite the coexistence of different interpretations109 ‒ helped to establish a common ground for the profitable action of transversality.110 However, their recourse to the language of maternalism proved to be a double-edged sword in the long run, linking too closely the interests of mothers and children, and contributing to the perpetuation of an infant-focused, gendered (non)system, where women’s primary roles are seen in child-bearing and child-rearing rather than as workers and, above all, as citizens entitled to rights per se. From this point of view, the terms of the post-war political debate on maternal and child policies show what Rossi Doria called “the apparently irreconcilable contradiction between equality and feminine specificity”,111 in which the “public enhancement of motherhood represents […] at the same time the most important strand of political elaboration and the most serious obstacle to full female citizenship”.112
However, gendered and cultural assumptions about women and family were not the only obstacle to an effective reform of the domain. In the immediate post-war years, besides budgetary problems, the failure in this field of welfare reforms was linked also to the “weakness of an overall political vision” which resulted from an often-unsuccessful dialogue between politicians and experts.113 The commitments of Christian Democrats and Leftists in those years extended only to a limited provision of social welfare, not a universalistic one. Neither side considered these provisions as a substantial part of social security: for the pci, this point of view related to the occupational approach; and for the dc to the tradition that attributed this kind of intervention to the charity sphere, as well as to the bias against a too invasive role for the state, as seen during the Constituent Assembly debate, an expression no doubt of the need to establish a distance from the fascist legacy.114 During the 1950s, both parties were to develop a more conscious view of social welfare, which, in the absence of a real political will and economic planning, however, did little to affect the status quo. Indeed, the radicalization of the debate in the early Cold War, which inserted maternal and child welfare into the field of the ideological battle for consensus, exacerbated the tension between the dc and the Left, obstructing a fair dialogue on public intervention in private institutions and the use of economic resources.115 In my own opinion, in many cases it was “the particular sclerosis within the dc” arising from the need to preserve the balance of interests and powers within the currents of the party, alongside the clientelism, with its base in the former fascist parastate bodies as well as the network of confessional institutions, which often turned out to be the biggest obstacles to reform. Their repercussions, in terms of a lack of modernization and a lack of secularization in social welfare, affected the lives of mothers and children for decades.116
Stefania Bernini, Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-War Europe: Britain and Italy Compared (Basingstoke, 2007).
Ann Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 1890–1970: The Maternal Dilemma (New York, 2005), 209–211.
Julie Suk, “Gender Equality and the Protection of Motherhood in Global Constitutionalism,” Law & Ethics of Human Rights, 12 (2018), 151–180.
Maria Federici (1899–1984), was among the founders of the Centro Italiano Femminile (Italian Women’s Centre – cif), the most important female Catholic association, of which she held the presidency until 1950. Confirmed deputy in the first legislation (1948–1953), she later abandoned active politics.
Lina Merlin (1887–1979), among the founders of the Women’s Group resistance movement, was elected to the Senate in the First and the Second Legislature (1948–1958). Her fame is linked to the Law 75/1958, which abolished the state regulation of prostitution and banned its exploitation.
Teresa Noce (1900–1980), was among the founders of the Italian Communist Party in 1921. In 1936 she fought in the Spanish Civil War. During wwii she was interned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies during the First legislature, in 1954 she abandoned politics and devoted herself to trade union activity.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Terza sottocommissione, Relazioni e proposte, Relazione dell’on. Signora Noce Teresa sulle garanzie economico-sociali per l’assistenza della famiglia (Rome, 1947), 102–103.
Ibid.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Terza sottocommissione, Relazioni e proposte, Relazione dell’on. Signora Angelina Merlin su garanzie economico-sociali per l’esistenza della famiglia (Rome, 1947), 100–101, 100.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Terza sottocommissione, Resoconto sommario della seduta del 13 settembre 1946 (Rome, 1947), 37.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Terza sottocommissione, Relazioni e proposte, Relazione dell’on. Signora Federici Maria sulle garanzie economico-sociali per l’esistenza della famiglia (Rome, 1947), 96–99, 97.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Terza sottocommissione, Resoconto sommario della seduta del 13 settembre 1946, op. cit., 37.
Pio xii, “Discorso alle donne di Azione Cattolica,” in Atti e discorsi di Pio xii, vol. 7, Gennaio-dicembre 1945 (Rome, 1946).
Maria Federici, “Presenza della donna nella vita sociale,” in Famiglie di oggi e mondo sociale in trasformazione. xxvii Settimana Sociale dei Cattolici d’Italia, Pisa 18–25 settembre 1954 (Rome, 1954), 145–167, 158. More generally, on the relationship between motherhood and society in the Catholic vision during the republican period, see Francesca Koch, “La madre di famiglia nell’esperienza sociale cattolica,” in Storia della maternità, ed. Marina D’Amelia (Rome–Bari, 1997), 239–272.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Terza sottocommissione, Resoconto sommario della seduta del 13 settembre 1946, op. cit., 39.
Amintore Fanfani (1908–1999) was one the major leaders of the dc. During his political career, he held various ministerial posts and was appointed Prime Minister six times.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Terza sottocommissione, Resoconto sommario della seduta del 18 settembre 1946 (Rome, 1947), 42.
Ibid., 38.
Ibid., 43.
Ibid., 43.
Ibid.
Ibid., 44.
Ibid.
On this debate, see Francesco Bonini, “La famiglia alla Costituente. Strategie e modelli istituzionali,” in Percorsi e modelli familiari tra ‘700 e ‘900, ed. Filippo Mazzonis (Rome, 1997), 207–254.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Prima sottocommissione, Relazione dell’on. Signora Iotti Leonilde sulla famiglia (Rome, 1947), 55–57, 56.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Prima sottocommissione, Relazione del deputato Corsanego Camillo sulla famiglia (Rome, 1947), 53–54, 54.
Giulia Galeotti, In cerca del padre: Storia dell’identità paterna in età contemporanea (Rome–Bari, 2009), 151–157.
Constitution of the Italian Republic, Art. 30.
Aldo Moro (1916–1978) was among the founders of the Christian Democrats, of which he became one of the major leaders. During his political career, he held various ministerial posts including the office of Prime Minister five times. He was killed by the Red Brigades in 1979.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti della Commissione per la Costituzione, Prima sottocommissione, Resoconto sommario della seduta del 7 novembre 1946 (Rome, 1947), 362.
Assemblea Costituente, Atti, Discussione in Assemblea Plenaria, seduta antimeridiana del 22 dicembre 1947 (Rome, 1947), 3571.
For more on this argument, see Maria Vittoria Ballestrero, “La protezione concessa e l’eguaglianza negata: il lavoro femminile nella legislazione italiana,” in Il lavoro delle donne, ed. Angela Groppi (Rome–Bari, 1996), 445–469, 466–467 and Barbara Pezzini, “Donne e Costituzione: le radici ed il cammino,” Studi e ricerche di storia contemporanea, 68 (2007), 163–187, 171.
Constitution of the Italian Republic, Art. 30 (italics for emphasis are mine).
Pietro Costa, “Cittadinanza sociale e diritto del lavoro nell’Italia repubblicana,” in Diritti e lavoro nell’Italia repubblicana, ed. Gian Guido Balandi and Giovanni Cazzetta (Milan, 1998), 21–83, 30.
On the law, see Maria Vittoria Ballestrero, Dalla tutela alla parità: La legislazione sul lavoro delle donne (Bologna, 1979), 139–149 and Pamela Schievenin, “A law made by Italian mothers for Italian mothers? Women politicians and the 1950 law on maternity rights,” Modern Italy, 1 (2016), 67–81.
On the tensions between Communist and Christian Democrat female deputies regarding the outcomes of the law, see Teresa Noce, Rivoluzionaria di professione (Rome, 1974).
However, three months of maternity leave before childbirth applied only to industrial workers. Agricultural workers had a right to eight weeks, and all the other categories to six weeks.
For instance, the chief inspector of Labour Inspectorate of Bari noted that “frequently, working mothers […] who were worried about their children being exposed several times per day to the inconvenience of travelling outside, especially in winter, prefer to keep them at home rather than bringing children to work; in other words, in this particular case, they are induced not to use lactation rooms set up for this purpose, but prefer to leave the company to breastfeed their children outside the workplace”. Archivio centrale dello Stato (hereafter: acs), Ministero del lavoro e della previdenza sociale, Direzione generale rapporti di lavoro, Divisione tutela lavoro femminile e minorile, b. 70, Rapporto di E. Bottone al Ministero del lavoro e della previdenza sociale, Direzione generale rapporti di lavoro, 8 giugno 1948.
Law no. 986 of 12 December 1950, On the prohibition of dismissal of working mothers, new mothers, and pregnant women. Restrictive interpretations of the law were corroborated also by case law.
Law no. 860 of 26 August 1950, Physical and economic protection of working mothers, § 11.
Lodovico Montini, “The Parliamentary Inquiry into Destitution in Italy,” International Labour Review, 60 (1955), 60–78, 74.
Chiara Giorgi and Ilaria Pavan, Storia dello Stato sociale in Italia (Bologna, 2021), 387.
Alberto Cova, “Spesa sociale e spesa per i minori in Italia (1945–1970),” in Welfare e minori: L’Italia nel contesto europeo del Novecento, ed. Michela Minesso (Milan, 2011), 201–232, 226–227.
istat and aai, Attività assistenziali in Italia. indagine sugli Istituti di ricovero, i refettori, gli iscritti negli elenchi comunali dei poveri al 31 maggio 1948. Relazione illustrativa e tavole statistiche (Rome, 1950), 9.
Silvia Inaudi, “Welfare und Ernährungssicherheit: Die Unterstützungsprogramme der Amministrazione per gli aiuti internazionali (Aai) von der Nachkriegszeit bis in die 60er Jahre,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 97 (2017), 63–80, 70.
On the onmi’s history, see Michela Minesso, ed., Stato e infanzia nell’Italia contemporanea. Origini, sviluppo e fine dell’ONMI 1925–1975 (Bologna, 2007); Domenica La Banca, Welfare in transizione: L’esperienza dell’ONMI (1943–1950) (Naples–Rome, 2013); Maurizio Bettini, Stato e assistenza sociale in Italia: L’Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia 1925–1975 (Livorno, 2008).
On the difficulties of the onmi in the aftermath of the war, see La Banca, Welfare in transizione, 245–258.
Actually, acis, despite depriving the Ministry of the Interior of some competencies, was unable to affect the chaotic field of healthcare; see Saverio Luzzi, Salute e sanità nell’Italia repubblicana (Rome, 2004), 114–117.
acs, Ministero dell’interno, Gabinetto, Categorie permanenti, onmi, b. 248, ONMI, Promemoria, s.d. [1947].
The Ministry of Health was created in 1958. The onmi was disbanded only in 1975, three years before the creation of the National Health System.
Minesso, Stato e infanzia nell’Italia contemporanea, 132–133.
Silvia Inaudi, “L’assistenza nel secondo dopoguerra tra continuità e mancate riforme. Note a margine del dibattito storiografico,” Storica, 46 (2010), 79–99.
Rita Cutini, “Nella prospettiva della ricostruzione: il Convegno per studi di assistenza sociale (Tremezzo, 16 settembre-6 ottobre 1946),” Bollettino Dell’archivio Per La Storia Del Movimento Sociale Cattolico In Italia, 2 (2004), 206–221. On the Tremezzo Conferenze, see also Le origini del servizio sociale italiano. Tremezzo: un evento fondativo del 1946. Saggi e testimonianze, ed. Maria Stefani (Rome, 2012).
Piero Malcovati, “Sviluppo e situazione dell’assistenza alla maternità ed all’infanzia e la riforma dell’onmi,” in Atti del convegno per studi di assistenza sociale. Sotto gli auspici del Ministero assistenza post-bellica della Delegazione del governo italiano per i rapporti con l’UNRRA e della missione italiana UNRRA. Tremezzo (Como), 16 settembre-6 ottobre 1946 (Milan, 1947), 479–509, 483.
Idem, “Per una riforma dell’onmi e per la riorganizzazione dell’assistenza alla maternità,” in Atti della Società Italiana di Ostetricia e Ginecologia, 37 (1946), 1–6, 4.
Francesco Pontieri, “Considerazioni sull’assistenza sociale del lattante,” I Problemi dell’Assistenza Sociale, 1 (1946), 15–22, 22.
“Riassunto delle interpellanze” in Atti del convegno per studi di assistenza sociale, 510–511, 510.
Like other fascist bodies, the onmi was commissioned immediately after the war.
See Maria Caronia, “L’onmi al congresso di pediatria di Firenze,” Maternità e Infanzia, 11 (1952), 11–12.
Giuseppina Savalli, “Funzioni dell’onmi,” Maternità e Infanzia, 2 (1950), 89–93, 91.
Between 1951 and 1959, counselling centres for mothers and infants rose from 2,072 to 2,548 and from 4,262 to 5,796, respectively. The Mother and Baby centres rose from 252 to 392; see istat, Annuario statistico dell’assistenza e della previdenza sociale, vols. i-viii (Rome, 1951/52–1959).
Quirino Peroni, “Criteri e metodi di assistenza. Relazione illustrativa delle indagini promosse dalla Commissione parlamentare sulle principali attività di assistenza pubblica in Italia,” in Camera dei Deputati, Atti della Commissione parlamentare di inchiesta sulla miseria in Italia e sui mezzi per combatterla, vol. iv, Criteri e metodi di assistenza. Indagini tecniche (Milan, 1953), 13–226, 224.
Maria Cacioppo, “Condizione di vita familiare negli anni Cinquanta,” Memoria, 6 (1982), 83–90, 87. The tension between assistance and healthcare, as has been noted, permeated the whole life of the organization. On this topic, see Bettini, Stato e assistenza sociale in Italia, 167.
The centres were established in the early years of the post-war period; however, they remained underdeveloped until the second half of the 1950s; see La Banca, Welfare in transizione, 271–281.
Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia, Quattro anni di attività. Relazione sull’attività svolta nel quadriennio 1950–1954 (Rome, 1954).
Minesso, Stato e infanzia nell’Italia contemporanea, 156.
Aldo Marcozzi, “L’anticamera del matrimonio,” La vita dell’ONMI, 7 (1958), 3, and Ministero della Sanità, Relazione sulla situazione dell’Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia (Rome, 1969), 40.
The establishment of these centres were contested by many Catholic doctors as contrary to the dictates of the Bible. They were also distrusted as deriving from communist models, having been trialled for the first time in the Soviet Union. On “the cold war battle” about this method, see Marianne Caron-Leulliez and Jocelyne George, L’accouchement sans douleur: Histoire d’une révolution oubliée (Paris, 2004), 70–72.
See Caffaratto and Tirsi Mario, “Vie nuove per i medici onmi,” Il Consultorio. Bollettino Ufficiale dell’Associazione Nazionale Medici ONMI, 1 (1957), 3–4. In 1960, nine centres were created.
Senato della Repubblica, Atti parlamentari, Documenti, disegni di legge e relazioni, Proposta n. 1319, 19 gennaio 1956.
Giuseppe Zago, “Il settore educativo-assistenziale per i minori. Trasformazioni istituzionali culturali e professionali (1948–1978),” in L’educazione extrascolastica nella seconda metà del Novecento. Tra espansione e rinnovamento (1945–1975), ed. Giuseppe Zago (Milan, 2017), 107–143, 126.
Ivo Pini, “Duecentomila bambini negli istituti per l’infanzia,” Maternità e infanzia, 3–4 (1951), 6–10, 7.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Silvia Inaudi, “Assistenza e povertà infantile negli anni dell’Inchiesta sulla miseria,” in Infanzia e povertà: Storie e narrazioni nell’Italia del dopoguerra (1945–1950), ed. Chiara Allasia, Bruno Maida and Franco Prono (Avellino, 2018), 47–60, 53–55.
Bianca Guidetti Serra and Francesco Santanera, Il paese dei celestini. Istituti di assistenza sotto processo (Turin, 1973).
On the pci, see Sandro Bellassai, La morale comunista: Pubblico e privato nella rappresentazione del PCI (1947–1956) (Milan, 2000).
Provinces, however, were not required to aid illegitimate children when there were charitable organizations that looked after them.
These figures are taken from Cesare Torricelli and Giorgio Bizzi, “Risultati dell’assistenza medico-sociale elargita dagli Istituti provinciali di assistenza all’infanzia e proposte per un ulteriore miglioramento,” in I cosiddetti illegittimi. Atti del Convegno nazionale sui nuovi orientamenti dell’assistenza ai cosiddetti illegittimi indetto dall’Unione regionale delle provincie emiliane. Bologna 25–27 ottobre 1963 (Rome, 1964), 17–39, 19.
Camera dei Deputati, Atti della Commissione parlamentare di inchiesta sulla miseria in Italia e sui mezzi per combatterla, vol. iii, Legislazione assistenziale (Rome, 1953), 60–61. On the disappearance of single mothers as a welfare subject, see Simonetta Simoni, “La costruzione di un’assenza nella storia del sistema italiano di Welfare” and Franca Bimbi, “Un soggetto tacitato in un regime di Welfare familistico,” in Le madri sole: Metafore della famiglia ed esclusione sociale, ed. Franca Bimbi (Rome, 2000), 85–100, and 101–134 respectively.
Camera dei Deputati, Atti della Commissione parlamentare di inchiesta sulla miseria in Italia e sui mezzi per combatterla, vol. iii, cit., 61.
Subsidies were linked to the child’s age and were progressively reduced for children as they grew older.
Clara Cannarsa Fiastri, “Sussidi di riconoscimento e alberghi materni,” Maternità e Infanzia, 1 (1950), 27–30, 28.
See, for instance, the judgmental observations of Romeo Montanari, “Considerazioni e proposte su alcuni indirizzi attuali e futuri dell’assistenza ai fanciulli nati da unioni illegittime,” in I cosiddetti illegittimi, op. cit., 242–248, 247.
See, among others, Amilcare Cicotero, Gli illegittimi. Aspetti sociali, giuridici, assistenziali del problema dei figli illegittimi (Turin, 1951), 32–34; Elda Scarzella Mazzocchi, “Le istituzioni materne: Esperienze e proposte,” Assistenza d’Oggi, 1–2 (1955), 34–48.
“Riassunto delle interpellanze,” 434.
On the development of the role of social workers within the onmi, see Giuliana Arena, “Welfare per l’infanzia e nuove professionalità. Origini e sviluppo del servizio sociale nell’Italia repubblicana,” in Minesso, Welfare e minori, 285–299.
Emilia Mazzei Giani and Ester Volpe Pisani, “Il servizio sociale dell’onmi nell’assistenza delle gestanti e madri, in particolare nubili,” Maternità e Infanzia, 5 (1966), 558–567, 566.
Camera dei Deputati, Atti parlamentari, Documenti, disegni di legge e relazioni, I Legislatura, Proposta n. 475, 7 aprile 1949.
Camera dei Deputati, Atti parlamentari, Documenti, disegni di legge e relazioni, I Legislatura, Proposta n. 1193, 29 marzo 1950, 1.
Fabio Fiorentino, “Due proposte di legge sui fanciulli illegittimi e abbandonati,” Assistenza d’Oggi, 4 (1954), 22–41, 31.
Camera dei Deputati, Atti parlamentari, Documenti, disegni di legge e relazioni, I Legislatura, Proposta n. 475, 7 aprile 1949, art. 9. Gennai Tonietti and Migliori’s proposal granted the possibility of refusing maternal recognition. However, mothers who did not request child support in person would be punished with imprisonment for between six months to one year.
Luigi Bennani, “Prefazione,” in Bianca Bianchi, Figli di nessuno (Milan, 1951), 7–14, 13–14.
Elvira Capace Elisi, “Sull’obbligatorietà del riconoscimento materno,” Maternità e Infanzia, 4 (1949), 223–226, 225.
Marco Bergamini, “Della protezione e dell’assistenza agli illegittimi,” in Atti del Convegno dedicato alla protezione ed assistenza agli illegittimi, Milano 24 aprile 1950 (Parma, 1950), 7–40, 21.
Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (hereafter: aap), poa, Ufficio Presidenza, b. 117, Riunione della Commissione ristretta della Consulta tecnica della gioventù, 12 gennaio 1954.
aap, poa, Ufficio Presidenza, b. 117, Voto della Consulta tecnica nazionale della gioventù sul problema degli illegittimi, s.d. [1954].
Inaudi, “L’assistenza nel secondo dopoguerra tra continuità e mancate riforme,” 95–96.
Camera dei Deputati, Segretariato generale, Ricerca sul diritto di famiglia. Parte 1, Il diritto di famiglia in Italia (Rome, 1966), Table xxii, 426. In the same years, the legitimate births went from 797,975 to 910,292.
Lamberto Borghi, “Psicologia e pedagogia di fronte ai problemi della difesa dell’infanzia,” in Consiglio Nazionale per la Difesa dell’Infanzia. La situazione dell’infanzia in Italia. Atti del primo convegno nazionale per la difesa dell’infanzia. Napoli, 3–5 gennaio 1952 (Rome, 1952), 39–51, 44–45.
“Mozione presentata dalla Commissione psico-sociologica e approvata dal convegno,” in ibid., 147–148.
Bernini, Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-War Europe, 74–75.
Taylor Allen, Feminism and Motherhood in Western Europe, 230.
On this law, see Silvia Inaudi, “Figli di nessuno. Il travagliato percorso della legge sull’adozione speciale,” Genesis, 1 (2015), 163–169 and eadem, “Enfants sans foyer: Le débat sur l’adoption en Italie dans les années 1960 et 1970,” Rives méditerranéennes, 60 (2020), 91–108.
Martine Spensky, “Le politiche sociali per le madri nubili in Inghilterra negli anni Cinquanta,” in I rapporti sociali di sesso in Europa (1930–1960): L’impatto delle politiche sociali, ed. Alisa del Re (Padova, 1991), 73–90.
For instance, a non-monogamous sex life, often resulting – due to prohibitions on contraception – in multiple pregnancies, was considered a risk factor for the child’s well-being, and as a sign of a disturbed personality; see the numerous testimonies reported in Bianca Guidetti Serra, Felicità nell’adozione (Milan, 1968), 208–223.
Maurizio Ferrera, Il welfare state in Italia: Sviluppo e crisi in prospettiva comparata (Bologna, 1984); Chiara Saraceno, “The Ambivalent Familism of the Italian Welfare State,” Social Politics, 1 (1994), 60–82; Manuela Naldini, The Family in the Mediterranean Welfare States (London, 2003).
Bernini, Family Life and Individual Welfare in Post-War Europe, 134.
On maternalism as a “capacious umbrella” that could serve various and often antithetical political aims, see Sonya Michel and Robyn Rosen, “The Paradox of Maternalism: Elizabeth Lowell Putnam and the American Welfare State,” Gender & History, 4 (1992), 364.
Recent scholarship has drawn attention to the role played by female politicians and women activists, undoubtedly marking the way for women’s rights in the new Republic; see Molly Tambor, The Lost Wave: Women and Democracy in Postwar Italy (Oxford, 2014); Michela Minesso, Diritti e politiche sociali: Le proposte delle parlamentari nelle assemblee legislative dell’Italia repubblicana (1946–1963) (Milan, 2016); Fondazione Nilde Iotti, L’Italia delle donne: Settant’anni di lotte e di conquiste (Rome, 2018).
Anna Rossi-Doria, “Le donne sulla scena politica,” in Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, vol. I, La costruzione della democrazia. Dalla caduta del Fascismo agli anni Cinquanta (Turin, 1994), 779–846, 840.
Eadem, “Maternità e cittadinanza femminile,” Passato e presente, 34 (1995), 171–177, 173.
Giorgi and Pavan, Storia dello Stato sociale in Italia, 323.
On these topics, see also Renato Moro, “Mondo cattolico, Stato sociale e infanzia (1945–1953),” in Minesso, Welfare e minori, 233–264.
See, for example, Bruno Maida, I treni dell’accoglienza: Infanzia, povertà e solidarietà nell’Italia del dopoguerra 1945–1948 (Turin, 2020), 192–205, 209–309.
Inaudi, “L’assistenza nel secondo dopoguerra tra continuità e mancate riforme,” 95.