ROME -- Cinzia Mezzi, a 32-year-old housewife who lives in
the Janiculum Hill neighborhood overlooking this city, spent Tuesday afternoon
in the beautiful Villa Sciarra park doing something almost completely unheard
of for Italian women these days.
Mezzi spent the afternoon in the park watching her two children play.
"Oh no, you noticed," Mezzi laughed, when asked about the size of her
brood. "When the second baby came along all of my friends said `Cinzia,
Cinzia, Cinzia, what are you doing?' Nobody in Italy has more than one baby
anymore. I'm considered a little crazy."
Over the past 25 years, Italian women - in a country where more than 90 percent
of the people are at least nominally Catholic - have just said "no"
to more babies, and most of them are either forgoing motherhood entirely or
insisting that their family planning stop at just one child.
What demographers are now calling Italy's "bambino bust" is something
of a marvel of the world. With a national birth rate of just 1.18 children per
woman - compared to a birth rate of 2.06 children per woman in the U.S., or
1.75 in neighboring France - Italy is no longer producing enough children to
sustain its population, and at the present rate will actually shrink by about a
third over the next 50 years, from about 56 million people to about 40 million.
Italy's incredible, shrinking baby machine is considered remarkable, but not
simply because the country has achieved the lowest birth rate in the world in
the space of a single generation. Culturally, the shift toward one-child
families is considered enormous. Italy, long celebrated in literature and film
for the pageantry of its large families, is also the historic seat of the Roman
Catholic Church, and the modern Italian penchant for small families has put its
married couples on a collision course with the Vatican and its teachings about
birth control.
Italy's bambino bust stands as a subtle but potent backdrop to the historic
Vatican summit this week between American cardinals and the pope. While the
issue raised at this week's meetings - the growing scandal of sexually abusive
priests - is vastly different from the question of Italian family planning,
ultimately both resound with a single theme: the continued credibility of the
Roman Catholic Church.
In America, questions about the moral authority and legal culpability of the
church and its priests have brought some pointed questions to the fore, not the
least about issues concerning sexuality.
The Rev. Richard McBrien, a prominent theologian from Notre Dame University,
raised the issue recently in comments about the sex abuse scandal. "One of
the good things that will come out of this crisis is that the Catholic Church,
at least at the official level, will no longer be able to speak out on
sexuality. The church's concern with sexuality has been obsessive," he
said.
In Europe, where over the past 25 years church attendance has plummeted and
priestly vocations have fallen sharply, nominal Catholics have grown used to
considering the church an afterthought, its vast bureaucracy and cathedrals
more reliable as a source of tourist revenue than a source of moral guidance.
Vatican officials have said that Pope John Paul II's concern about just that -
a European-style skepticism about the church and its hierarchy being introduced
into America by the sex-abuse scandal - was one reason for this week's
conclave.
When asked about the Catholic Church and its teaching on birth control, Mezzi
seemed almost joyfully defiant, an attitude typical in a country where opinion
surveys show that more than 90 percent of women use birth control and that has
one of the highest abortion rates in Europe.
"Oh, please, do not talk to me about the church and the pope," Mezzi
said, throwing back her head to laugh. "Who is he to tell me what I can do
with my body and how many babies I must have? The pope talks, talks, talks, but
believe me, nobody in Italy listens."
Lorenzo Breveglieri, 31, an officer with the Italian Senate police, was kicking
a soccer ball with his 6-year-old son on Tuesday afternoon, also in Villa
Sciarra park. He and his wife "thanked the Lord," he said, when their
son was born, but plan to have no more.
"Life in Italy is not what it is like on the TV shows I see from
America," Breveglieri said. "The economy is very competitive,
apartments are hugely expensive, and most couples both have to work to scrape
by. Middle class is just survival here. I would love to have more babies, but
we can't do that and make a down payment on an apartment. No one in Italy has a
big family any more."
Sociologists and political scientists point to another important factor. A
succession of unstable governments and traditional Italian reluctance toward
funding a generous social welfare state have prevented Italy from making the
long-term commitment to child care and other benefits for women that
neighboring countries in Europe began establishing over 30 years ago.
"You have to understand what has happened in Europe during the postwar
years," said Margaret B. Melady, a sociologist who has spent nine years in
Italy and is now president of the American University in Rome. "In Europe,
there's a real sense that government programs have replaced the traditional
role of the family, and in France, Germany and Scandinavia tax breaks for
larger families, universal day care and free medical care have created a very
protective structure supporting slightly larger families. These countries saw a
baby bust coming years ago and planned for it. Italy never did this."
American-style values and the gradual impact of the women's liberation movement
are also mentioned by many Italian women. Sylvia Mampieri, 27, works for a film
production company in Rome and married last year after what she called a
"long playing-around period" in her early 20s.
"I grew up watching Julia Roberts movies and said to myself, `Oh, I want
that life for a while,'" Mampieri said, while dining with friends at an
outdoor cafe along the trendy Via Trastevere in Rome. "I just wanted to
get out of university, find a job and have boyfriends for a while before I got
married, a life very different from what my mother had. Birth control gave me
that freedom, and I can see already that I will just continue its benefits in
marriage."
Attitudes like that, of course, have long exasperated the conservative John
Paul II. On several occasions, while reaffirming church doctrine on birth
control, the pope has specifically mentioned changing sexual mores in Europe,
and his annoyance with Italian women in particular has been one of his most
public piques. During a Vatican speech in February, 2000, the pope caused a
furor in Italy by saying "Italians: Make more babies."
"Oh, that man! Italian women will never forget that he said that, but he
just made things worse for himself and his church," said Univella
Giannotta, 36, who was interviewed at another Via Trastevere cafe. Giannotta is
a medical librarian at a Rome hospital, has one child, and didn't marry until
she was 30.
"The pope just doesn't understand our lives and the pressures on us,"
Giannotta said. "We Italians are very sensual, and we enjoy our outdoor
culture and fun. No one can afford big apartments or large cars so we enjoy
life at night in the cafes together, meeting our friends and family, or going
to the cinema. It's a lot easier to have just one child because then one couple
can care for two or three of them at night while the others go out. I laugh at
the pope because what we have in Italy is just one big beautiful family sharing
the children, but he doesn't understand that."
Lorenzo Breveglieri said that Italian men are also adjusting. He and many of
his friends, he said, resent the traditional depiction of Italian men as
chauvinistic lovers and husbands who insist on having more babies and don't
share in child-rearing chores.
"My parents keep saying, `Where are the babies, we need more babies,' but
that's not important to me," Breveglieri said. "It's a lot more
important to me that my wife just loves me a lot."