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When Rita Piccoli asks her fiancé Riccardo when they are finally going to take this next step, namely having a child, she already knows that he will squeeze her hand again very firmly, that he will then say: "We have to wait for better times. " That the desire for a family shrinks back to a few syllables, "fantasticheria", a reverie.
The two of them are sitting at their kitchen table in a two-room apartment in a village above the city of Catania in Sicily, where the tangerines hang in the front gardens like little moons at the end of November.
Maria Feck
Ricardo and Rita, both 34 today, shortly after they met 15 years ago
Rita and Riccardo, both 34, met in the classroom more than 15 years ago, they met quickly, and later they enrolled in the same university. Accademia Belle Arti di Catania. Graphic Design. Those were the good times.
"Of course we want children, actually we want more than two," says Riccardo. "But how will that work?"
In 2018, 439,747 children were born in Italy, fewer than ever before. The country has the lowest birth rate in Europe, a woman gives birth to an average of 1.29 children here. For comparison: in Germany the number is 1.57, the European average of 1.6 children.
Maria Feck
Midwife with newborn in Catania, Sicily
The number of newborns has been shrinking steadily since the baby boom in 1964. Every new statistic holds a new negative record. Meanwhile, more people are dying than are born.
Why is that?
Ernesto Falcidia gave birth to about 20,000 children in his life, he figured that out. But when the gynecologist says that fewer babies were born in Italy last year than in 2017, he speaks of a "loss," then says, "We have a national emergency here."
Falcidia's office is on the ground floor of the "Casa di Cura" women's clinic in Catania, on the left behind the reception. A swivel chair, a wooden desk, and on top of it in a corner, small angel figures, "one for every recent birth," says Falcidia.
Maria Feck
Ernesto Falcidia in the operating room of the Casa di Cura maternity hospital
The doctor calls up the current statistics on his computer. It says: On average, a woman in Italy is 31.2 years old when she gives birth to her first child. In Germany, women are 30 years old when the first child is born.
Falicidia leans forward. He says many women come to his office when they are well over 40 years old. Only then did they feel financially able to get a child through. But because it is often difficult to get pregnant at this age, he now carries out many artificial inseminations.
From Falicidia's point of view, there is no one reason for the decline in births. One thing is certain, however, the financial insecurity in the lives of young people: Since the economic crisis in 2008, says Falicidia, births have plummeted. There are no secure jobs. 28 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed, and more than half in the south. Many young people go abroad. They found their families there.
Maria Feck / DER SPIEGEL
Angel figures on Ernesto Falcidia's desk: "One for each birth"
Falcidia says women enter his practice who have been pressured or fired at work because they are pregnant. He says he doesn't understand why neither the Italian government nor employers do more for families. "There are no public daycare centers, kindergartens, schools on every corner," says the doctor.
Couples in Italy, it seems, are not against offspring per se. However, many hesitate because the situation does not seem stable enough to them to become parents.
An Italian family receives a "Bonus Bébé" in the first three years after the birth of the child, 80 euros per month - but only if their annual income is below 25,000 euros. Statutory maternity leave is five months; fathers can take a maximum of five days of paid vacation when their child is born.
In addition, mothers and fathers can apply for parental leave, but with a low financial allowance. This means that women in particular stay at home because they earn less on average. And, in more conservative Italy, it reinforces the fact that raising children is still mostly a woman's job. For them, family remains either or: either a job. Or a child.
Maria Feck
Newborns in the maternity hospital in Catania: fewer children are born each year
Back to the living room of Rita and Riccardo Piccoli. Rita has lit a scented candle, it smells of vanilla. She tells how the difficult time began.
How neither of them found any jobs after graduating from college. How they continued to live with their parents because they couldn't afford to rent. As they only dared to move out of their own home for the first time this year into their own little apartment. Rita works in a shop where you can have your T-shirts printed. Riccardo sometimes works at the university, sometimes as a fruit seller, as a postman, gardener, wedding photographer.
The couple live between 700 and 1000 euros a month, for two, of which they pay 250 euros rent. "When I have a baby, I want to offer him the best I have, but at the moment we have nothing," says Rita.
Maria Feck
Empty chairs in the waiting room of the maternity hospital: the chief doctor is carrying out artificial inseminations more and more often
The two say that many of their friends left for London or Paris or Australia, they say that if you stay in Sicily you have to make many sacrifices. Rita hopes that her car will survive the next winter. She canceled the contract in the gym, almost all of the furniture was built by herself. But the biggest victim, she says, is to have a child.
Sociologists and demography researchers advise that the Italian state must finally act - and improve the conditions for young families and children. Invest money. Lately, politicians have been making headlines with questionable ideas:
"A country without children is a country that is dying," ex-Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini said in the spring - and made the issue of babies a top priority. But instead of creating more public daycare places, his party, the right-wing populist Lega, introduced a so-called farmland premium into the budget. Anyone who will give birth to a third child by 2021 should be granted funding by the state of arable land.
Maria Feck
Gynecologist Falcidia talking to a patient
And then, a few years earlier, there was the idea of the then Minister of Health, Beatrice Lorenzin. It introduced a national fertility day on September 22nd. In addition, she had posters posted across the country.
There was, for example, a woman holding her belly with one hand and an hourglass with the other. In addition, the saying: "Beauty knows no age. Fertility does." Another poster showed a man's hand holding a cigarette and the sentence: "Don't let your sperm go up in smoke." The campaigns, you can say, were not a great success.
Buonaccorso family, father, mother, son, daughter
"I haven't hoped for politics for a long time," says Francesco Buonaccorso, 41. He is still wearing the green overalls from his work, the city cleaning, when he sits down in the living room with his family, with his wife Lucia, 36, and the Daughter Sophia, 11. Later the son Salvatore, 17, will also join.
The Buonaccorso family lives in a poorer area of Catania, linen is hanging on the back yard, there is shop space at the front, most of them are not used. The Buonaccorsos are one of those families in Italy that decided to have children, but who got into acute financial problems as a result.
Lucia was pregnant for the first time at just 18. She had met Francesco shortly before. You immediately fell in love. They married. That was 17 years ago. The wedding photo, on which the couple is leaning against a silver Mercedes, hangs over the sofa in the living room.
Maria Feck / DER SPIEGEL
The Buonaccorso family in their apartment: "Something like security for the first time"
Francesco looked in vain for employment to take care of his family. The lack of jobs in the south and later the economic crisis hit the family directly. Francesco financed the family with odd jobs, sometimes helping out with his father in the supermarket, he often worked late into the night. The family lived for a long time from four hundred euros a month. Lucia dropped out of her training as a beautician, took care of the household and children, and until today she has not managed to enter the world of work.
Italy has one of the lowest employment rates in Europe for women, especially mothers. Experts attribute this to the fact that there are not enough crèche places that could give mothers the freedom to work. In some regions, only five percent of children are cared for in public daycare centers. In Italy, when a parent has to earn money for the whole family, it often leads directly to the poverty line. In Italy, 1.2 million children live in acute poverty.
"We actually didn't have the right basis to raise children," says Lucia, stroking her daughter Sophia through the hair. Then she uses the word she often uses to describe her life, "renunciation". "Our whole life is characterized by renunciation," she says.
Maria Feck
The Bonaccorso family lives in one of the poorer areas of Catania
The couple considered for a long time whether they should have a second child. Six years after her son Salvatore, Sophia was born.
And at some point the permanent job for Francesco also came. For several years now he has been taking care of public parks, garbage, repairing, planting flowers. He now has a regular income for the first time in his life. All in all, the family has a net monthly income of EUR 1500. That is more than ever before. The family is paying off a loan for their three-room apartment, 500 euros a month, for the next 25 years. Salvatore, who will soon be celebrating his 18th birthday, is still sharing a room with his sister.
"For the first time in our lives, we have something like security," says Lucia. They would no longer have to calculate every time whether they could buy new shoes for their children. So far, the family only has one bike. But maybe they'll buy a second one soon, and then Francesco and Lucia could cycle along the coast together. Lucia says that she would have liked to have more children, but that the situation in southern Italy does not allow it.
Maria Feck / DER SPIEGEL
Salvatore, 17, and Sophia, 11, share a nursery
Salvatore is currently studying for his high school diploma. Studying something in engineering would be good, he says. But he first has to clarify whether the family can afford to go to university.
Ernesto Falcidia from the maternity hospital says that when he looks at the year that will soon come to an end, he has a bad feeling about the birth rate. "I think," he says, "in 2019 we could break the next negative record."
Rita and Riccardo Piccoli hope to find reliable jobs soon. The other day they were with their nephew, he is now two years old and forms his first syllables. Perhaps, they say, they won't think that much next year. "Maybe," says Rita, "we'll just have a child."
This contribution is part of the Global Society project, for which our reporters report from four continents. The project is long-term and is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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