A few generations before mine, that of my grandfathers and grandmothers and great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, we lived in districts, in a rural context. The districts were clusters of houses and people, sometimes even far from each other, connected by small streets that could be traveled on foot or by cart.
The districts were almost independent communities or at least they tried to be: there was a common oven to make bread for example and my father still tells me how the day in which bread was made involved all the people of the district. Some kneaded the dough, some baked it, etc.
The resources of a family were shared and everyone survived together. Of course it wasn’t a fairy tale world like some people imagine, life was hard, you just survived and there were no comforts.
In the countryside, you gave birth at home, the children were from everyone and were educated by all the people who lived there. They all played together, they were watched by everyone, everyone knew each other.
A pregnant woman was everyone’s business, giving birth was an event that involved the whole district.
If the person who had given birth had no milk, someone else breastfed and if the person who had generated the baby could not raise it because he was too poor or for any other reason, the baby grew up in another house, with other “parents”.
One day my mother showed me photos of my great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers and their relatives, she tried to reconstruct a line genealogical of their origins, but often it was not possible to understand who was the child of whom.
It was normal, everyone had children and who could take care of them.
Now let’s take a look at today’s society. People live in apartments in condominiums where they often don’t even know their neighbors. Everyone has to make do. Those who can afford a single house are very careful about having contact with their neighbors. There is a clear distinction between “what’s mine” and “what’s yours”.
Pregnant women are alone. They turn to the public service, to the hospital, there are impersonal pre-natal courses and periodic visits where it is already a miracle if you are always followed by the same modicə.
Once the baby is born, the woman is made to get up from bed almost immediately to take care of the newborn. My mother instead told me that in the past, they stayed at least a week resting in the hospital. In the districts, the new mother was helped by all the local women.
Nowadays, women are “lucky” if they have their mother or mother-in-law who “help”. Fathers don’t even have parental leave and we are all convinced that it is the mother’s exclusive duty to take care of the newborn.
Women find themselves in their little boxes of houses with this little being who needs constant attention and they are tired, they don’t sleep, and they are alone. Also because the important thing is that the partner or husband continues his life undisturbed, which consists of going to work, sleeping and going to soccer on Friday night.
We call all this “normal”, and we appeal to the concept of “traditional family”.
It happened that in an Italian hospital a woman gave birth and entrusted the newborn to the “cradle for life”.
The thing was slapped on the front page of all the newspapers and all the people allowed themselves to comment on any social network.
The entrustment of newborns to the cradle of life occurs anonymously, otherwise the name and surname of that woman would have been given to the whole world to eat.
This woman did not “abandon” her son, but “entrusted” him to the cradle of life and the reason why she did it is not even to be taken into consideration, because if she had lived in a district, like 100 years ago, no one would have been scandalized and things would have been very different for everyone.
If this woman thought that the child would grow up better with someone else than with her, she made a great gesture of love.
This society tells women “have children” (butwhy then?? do we have to populate this already collapsing world even more?), leaves them completely alone and then judges them if they make a free and conscious choice for the good of the child.
And as if that were not enough, HE appears, the rich white male, who from his house in Abu Dhabi allows himself to “make an appeal” to this woman to take back the child in exchange for money or who knows what kind of help.
But you, Ezio Greggio, have you ever been a mother? Have you ever given birth? Have you ever had to make a choice like that of entrusting a child to someone? Do you know that woman? Do you know why she did it? Have you ever felt the social pressure of being a woman on you? The answer to these questions is NO. So you must not allow yourself to have a say in this matter.
And you were able to have your say in it even by offending other people, namely those you labeled as “not real mothers”. But with what title do you label some people as “real mothers” and others as “false mothers”? What does “being a mother” mean to you? Giving birth? Or caring for a child for your whole life?
And in all this, where is the father of this child? Why is the appeal addressed only to the mother? Do fathers only exist when it is convenient? Why has there been no judgment expressed on the father, no media pillorying, none of the thousand hypotheses of “abandonment” that have been aired for the mother?
I close this post with some questions that all people should ask themselves:
- what is the “traditional family”?
- why should the “traditional family” be an asset to be protected?
- why is it assumed that in the “traditional family” children grow up better?
- what does it mean to be “real mothers”?
- why do judgments always fall on women and never on men?
- why do we judge other people’s choices without knowing anything?
