Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the EU. Many people see a child as incompatible with work and everyday life. Now the “childfree” movement, organized by people who don’t want to have children, is putting the country under even more pressure.
As a child, Clara Di Lello loved Barbie, not the baby doll. With Barbie, she didn’t have to pretend that she liked playing mother-child. “I never had a maternal instinct,” she says today. Di Lello is 30 years old, has been with her boyfriend for eleven years – and is happily childless. It takes courage to say this, because women who don’t want to have children are still stigmatized in Italy. Defamed as not being full-fledged.