Let us build a society to look to the future

For decades, the debate on motherhood was dominated by two opposing and equally reductive narratives: on the one hand, motherhood as a woman's natural destiny; on the other, motherhood as an obstacle to full individual fulfilment. In between, however, women's real lives have developed: more educated, more economically autonomous, more aware of their individuality than any previous generation. It is within this transformation that the choice to have a child has changed in nature. Motherhood no longer represents an obligatory passage into adulthood. It has become one possibility among many. And it is precisely this freedom that has profoundly changed the way women look at the choice to become mothers.

In recent years, the public debate has mainly focused on the costs of motherhood: professional penalties, mental burden, economic difficulties, loss of time and autonomy. A representation based on real elements, but which risks reducing the maternal experience to a simple list of renunciations. Yet the most significant fact is another: despite everything, the desire for generativity continues to exist. It resists even among the more educated generations that are aware of the difficulties involved in raising a child today. A sign that the choice to have a child cannot be explained solely by economic or rational criteria.

Motherhood continues, in fact, to represent an experience that escapes the logic of individual performance. In a society centred on permanent self-realisation, having a child introduces a radically different element: the construction of a bond that redefines the relationship with time, with priorities and with the very idea of the future. This is not to deny the difficulties. In Italia, in particular, women continue to bear much of the burden of care, while welfare and the labour market often remain inadequate. But the fall in the birth rate is not only due to economic factors. Even in the most advanced countries in terms of gender equality and social services, in fact, births are falling.

Underlying this trend is probably a deeper crisis: the contemporary difficulty of imagining the future as a desirable space. Having a child instead requires a form of trust. Not in perfect conditions, which rarely exist, but in the possibility that life retains meaning even within uncertainty. This is why motherhood continues to be, for many women, a positive choice. Not a social obligation nor a universal model, but an experience capable of generating belonging, continuity and meaning in an increasingly fragmented society. The real challenge is not to convince women to have children. It is to build a cultural context that stops equating motherhood only with sacrifice and loss.