A centre-left politician has sparked controversy in Italy with a proposal to automatically assign babies their mother’s surname. Democratic Party Senator Dario Franceschini said in a post on X the measure would serve as “a compensation for a centuries-old injustice”.
The senator, also a former Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities, argued for a break from the tradition of assigning newborns their fathers’ surnames. He described the convention as a “cultural source” for gender inequality. Other politicians, including Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, have mocked the proposal.
Salvini , leader of the far-right Lega party, also took to X to mock Franceschini, labelling the proposal “one of the great priorities of the Italian left”.
“Let’s erase these dads from the face of the earth, that way we’ll solve all the problems,” he added.
Federico Mollicone, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s “Fratelli d’Italia” (Brothers of Italy) party, chipped into the debate, saying the proposal marked a shift “from patriarchy to matriarchy”.
However, he did not rule out the option of giving children both of their parents’ surnames. It is common in European countries, including Spain and Portugal, for a child to bear both their parents’ surnames.
The father’s surname typically comes first.
This is not the first time a debate on surnames has surfaced in Italy. In 2022, a judgement from the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that automatically assigning a baby their father’s surname was unconstitutional. It offered two alternatives – babies should be given both of their parents’ surnames in an agreed-upon order, or, parents should decide together which of the two surnames the child receives.
However, no action to draft legislation to implement the ruling has been taken since. The Meloni’s government came to power in October that year.
Meloni is a Catholic and a conservative and believes in defending “God, fatherland and family”. She is opposed to euthanasia, same-sex marriage, and same-sex parenting, saying that nuclear families are exclusively headed by male-female pairs.
She has been criticised for defending “traditional” Catholic families and values, with her policies harshly impacting families who do not fit this category.
She has also been accused of eroding LGBTQ+ parenting rights by criminalising surrogacy carried out abroad and banning non-biological parents from being listed on babies’ birth certificates.