Twelve years after the first circle was captured on camera, Lunàdigas returns to Florence to document a second circle, collecting new testimonies of women’s experiences of motherhood – a journey marked by desire, rejection and uncertainty. The women recount different journeys in which the choice to have children is intertwined with work, relationships and living conditions. A journey through a pluralistic and non-normative view of motherhood and an in-depth exploration of surrogacy.
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CLAUDIA: «Roberta, do you remember? The last time we prepared… the 8th March, under the guidance of Giulia, because she’s always full of ideas for taking to the streets. We made a circle where we introduced ourselves and from there, we reintroduced the circle of women. At the Melograno centre, there’s a bit of this thing, those women who live here have a kind of obligation to participate at the women’s dinner. We’ve been doing this women’s dinner for almost 20 years, we brought this story of the circle which is something that was introduced a bit by Ennio, the Native Americans, where you hold a stick and pass it on to others. But for me, a safe space for women it really resonates with my culture as a woman of the 1970s, as you say. Because it makes sense, because you deal with some issues and you don’t have to… you don’t have to worry about playing the good girl or the bad girl or whatever… and we talk about the uterus and all of our… our “stuff” as we see fit. Unfortunately, when there is the presence of man is always different. This is a very natural, important thing, and I feel very much at ease, safe and secure. And then, of course, I’ve always had, I’ve chosen… I’ve always lived in mixed communities. And then I have two sons, I have a legendary partner, but, in fact… even him from time to time just doesn’t have to be there, he has to understand it and he has to… he has always accepted it. And then, the circle for me is an important thing because we learned it. I’m also very good at talking, chatting, and rambling on, Giulia then… others. But there are also always people who don’t say anything, who can’t do it, they don’t say anything. Not because they don’t have it in them, but because we are more blatant, we feel more important, or it comes easier to us… we come up with a thousand ideas and so on. So, this thing about the circle… Apart from anything, a circle is always something protective, the circle is magic and maybe you could throw in the middle a couple of nice little things here and there as well. And then yes, each one, even those who are always keen to cast doubt on others, they wait and speak at their turn. You have to be patient, you have to live in the moment, you have to live… leave time running. Truly a surprising thing, in all the years we have been organizing the women’s dinner, we learned how to do it well, because we are a circle, we are very good at it. For me, it is very useful. And then I have to say, you know, I make circles everywhere, I also do them around my flowerbeds with stones. It’s always important.»
GABRIELLA: «The energy is circular, that’s why the circle is important, even for the Native Americans, because it’s a circular energy, it doesn’t break.»
VIRGINIA: «You have to trust and entrust.»
GIULIA: «Starting from this… the circle of lunàdigas that I saw in 2012, which I really liked it, because some very interesting things came out and they were also fun, right? So, this aspect, which is a bit… some reflections on, well… how women who don’t have children are seen by women who have children? Above all, a series of rebounds… regarding identity as a result of this thing. Anyway, back then, I didn’t have any children and then afterwards I had one. I have to say that, in fact, it has been a choice and yes, I mean, I’m… I can say that I never regretted it or something, but it certainly poses some… Well, sure. Nina reminds me that I have a son, I thought I had said that, anyway… if it wasn’t clear, yes, a son, okay. So, in that sense here, I find it to be true. For example, something that came out that impressed me a lot in Lunàdigas, is that yes, a child becomes a top priority, with regard to a woman’s life. A top priority because you have the responsibility of bringing another person into the world. In this society, often you don’t have the space to enjoy this top priority in a relaxed way. And that’s why they often push you to have a very neurotic dynamic regarding this experience. And I find this yet another… how can I say… yet another act of exploitation perpetrated against women by capitalism. I mean, we have to do everything, everything and more. I mean, we have to have children, we have to raise them well, we have to work, we have to make money, we must have lovers, we must be beautiful, we must always have an orgasm and these… I mean, they’re all things… they seem like… the height of success, don’t they? But having 24 hours in a day, personally, all these things, at my age, now 42, I find it really stressful.
So, in that sense… in Lunàdigas there was the last, I think, very nice dialogue… In the documentary, there was a woman saying to the other woman, a woman who had no children, who was probably her partner, who said to the one who had them, “Really, when one decides to have a child, then you will forever come second, you’ll never be the first again.” The child takes up this space of priority over… you have to… In fact, with respect to the relationship I found it very impactful, with respect to my relationship with other people in my life, right? Like, “Ah sorry I have to go…” I mean, we’re talking, Sorry I have to go. The baby is crying, that’s it…well…I don’t know… She’s gone. Period. Even with respect to choices, then it becomes very tiring to say: “Look, this person is not fit to be with my child, so I can’t even be with you either.” Or for example, the child is very jealous, I don’t know, of a partner, or a new person. Therefore, problems, difficulties in all this, sure you say well! But actually, as the woman who had a child said, “Well, actually, it really is a wonderful experience that helps you grow.” And actually yes, in my opinion it is. Then it became for me a relationship with this person who grows more and more, very nice too, that is, a very strong relationship, even physical, isn’t it? Blood ties. This ongoing coexistence, which, in fact…
Children condition… affect your work dynamics, but precisely because the work dynamics is in a terrible state. There is never time! Recently, I was thinking, why isn’t there menstrual leave, I mean, when one has her period… couldn’t there be… Do you have to be productive every day of the year? That is, couldn’t there be 5 days per month that you can have for yourself and you’ll be a better, more balanced person. You could at least not have the physical suffering, recently I’ve been thinking on that aspect. However, motherhood forces you to make choices. For example, you want to send your child to a certain school, but then I can’t work because I don’t have time… to do both things. I have to decide what job to do as a result of the child, can I do that or not? In the end it always tears you apart.
I would like to add some thoughts on the subject of surrogacy, something that I recently received, which is regarding the Family Code recently approved in Cuba. In Cuba, they made this incredible effort to process a new code of the laws governing the family. And they’ve come up with something futuristic! Something we can never imagine and we’ll never get there, not even in 100 years! But they got there! How did they rule surrogacy? They didn’t say it’s forbidden, they stated though and explained what can surrogacy be in a healthy society. OK, I’m a friend of yours, I’ve been aware of your situation regarding wanting to have a child, and I know you really want it. I feel able to do this for you, So, I really do this for you, I am really having this child for you. You see? And that makes sense to me, that is, it becomes something that on a truly human level I’ll give you this great gift of my time, of my body, to make you happy. That’s it! It is of course forbidden to do it for money, there. It will absolutely, how can I say it, verified that it is a stable relational dynamic, because then there are all the subsequent consequences. When the child is born, at some point they will ask, who is my biological mother, right? And so sensibly, if that biological mother is a close person to the mother who will then become the… in that case there shouldn’t be any particular problems. So, I found this a very interesting answer also, indeed, to that appalling trivialisation that capitalism proceeds to perpetrates, that once again manages to bring exploitation and money to the fore, even in this kind of things.»
LISA: «I am Lisa. I am the mother of two grown up girls, 21 and 18 years old. Let’s just say I’ve been basically a mum, and I’d say I’ve been on my own quite a lot too especially in the early years, because anyway, I chose to work part-time to be able to dedicate myself to them. I definitely don’t regret this choice because it gave me so much. It also gave me many opportunities, but now that they are grown-ups, somehow, I am reflecting about it, since having a part-time job to dedicate myself to the family, I’m not fully autonomous or self-sufficient. And today I see it as a limit.»
VALENTINA: «I have three children; I had the first one when I was 35 and I thought I didn’t want kids. I mean, up to 35, I thought I wasn’t having kids, because I didn’t feel fit, I didn’t like children. Then I met someone, who is still the person by my side, and we went seven years without having children, so we have lived our lives. Then I started, I had the first, then the second and then the third as well. I’m very happy to have had children, because I don’t know if… I think it’s a bodily instinct. Having children is… I, for one, have experienced it first-hand as a physical thing, like when one has a pain, a sensation, an emotion. I chose to work, I do a job that I really like, I’m really pleased and I’m happy to go to work every morning, but I chose to work part-time because since I brought children into the world, I wanted to look after my kids. I wanted to support them, I wanted to pick them up from school, I wanted to be present in their lives from an early age. So, financially speaking, certainly a bit less, but it was a choice. In my opinion, regardless of the children, it’s better to work less, it’s a bit obvious, so everyone can work. Definitely, work less. And I work fewer hours than someone who works 8 hours a day. And they’re on me now at work, because my children are now older, and they ask me to work 8 hours a day. Because I… Of course! Because it’s not just 8 hours, but then it turns into 9, then 10, and then the Saturday morning and I have no intention whatsoever, I’m really fine like this. Now that the children are grown up, I can dedicate myself to everything else. At last! I realized, growing up and raising them… as I get older and they grow up, that you can… because in hindsight it’s easier… you can be with your children also in a different way. Less… they need even less. Children may need even less. I mean, it’s a… it is culturally within me, I don’t mean that about us, but deep down I knew I had to be there, that I had to do, I had to be careful not to miss anything. I’m also pretty organized person, it’s my thing, but children don’t need all that. As I raise them, I realized that I could also have been less present and they would have been… they’d still be fine. They wouldn’t have missed a thing and I might have been a little less worried. Because it’s tiring, because it really is exhausting raising your kids, really challenging.»
SALEHA (translated by CLAUDIA): «She is 21 years old. I don’t think about it yet, I’m not yet at that stage in life when I think about having children. Wait. So… So… It’s an important consideration… in my thinking about whether or not to have children, but I can imagine not having them, as I can imagine having them. But it’s important to her. I have to imagine it with a partner, but also with a community. Here, we enter into the second theme about work. That is, for many women, working is to raise children. No, I’m just starting my studies which need my full commitment and I know that if I were to have children this would be over. So, right now, I am very focussed on my studies, I want to do this. Then, who knows, children may come later. It’s all in the future. “Leihmutterschaft”, that’s just too cute. The word in German… is like “mom on loan.” So, I have to translate this, because then she says, for me it is a great wonder, on a scientific level, that something like this is possible. She thinks it’s an incredible opportunity, and it might also be the idea that for a woman could be a possibility of working. As it’s something that I’m able to do, which I’m good at and I can offer my uterus to make babies. And these thoughts are very… really mind-blowing, though… there’s that possibility, she says. True Giulia, I translated well, more or less? She also said that the economic aspect is dangerous, yes. She understood! So, she says: she mentioned a few Hollywood stars who have had surrogate children… but doesn’t really feel like saying much, I need to know more. That’s what she said. Thank you.»
YOYO (translated by CLAUDIA): «So, I’m also 21 years old and since I was 13, I think of pregnancy as a beautiful and very important thing. Not having children in itself, but this miracle that creates… growing the baby in your belly. I don’t know if this is influenced by the society where I live or if it’s a natural thing, I still don’t understand. That’s it.»
CLAUDIA: «My family used to tell me, you have studied, you could have had a career and you could have done this, you have skills. But given that I have all this experience of women who have suffered from this contradiction, I said no, I’m just doing this. And then I also took foster children in, Sonita, I expanded this mission of being a mom. Yes, now since I moved to Cecina, I came across a book very… of a collective from Naples who have written about women’s condition under capitalism and so on. And they write that women, women’s ability to reproduce, to have children, is something that has always served capitalism. And it’s a thing… in fact, and I’m a true, militant anti-capitalist, but I have done a great service to capitalism. I had three children, I took one into foster care and they could… society has saved a lot with me, so it’s a terrible thing. Precisely, in these last two years since I have retired to the seaside, and I studied and I said: “Goodness, what did I do?” And there are also times when I would say, yes, as I am pretty good at leading, my partner Massimo said: “You should have become the manager of a hospital, or I don’t know… of a children’s place, with 100 kids and so on.” And not just… be free from being a mom and accumulate other experiences. And yes, it is true, but I felt very strongly the background of my generation, of the three women who preceded me and I couldn’t do it otherwise. That’s the way it is. And then there’s the issue of surrogacy, I don’t know much about it. That is, I have a granddaughter who is with her partner, a woman, who had two children, in fact, I don’t know exactly how she did it. But I don’t… I can’t be moralistic about these things. I have other things that worry me.»
MARA: «The thing I feel so much today is perhaps, that is, at least for me, so much relentlessness, too much relentlessness. I see it among my friends who are all doing… well, several of them, have embarked on different paths to have children which I think are emotionally and psychologically devastating. And maybe it’s a little like going… I can see it a bit… I see this kind of going against nature, but… they are choices that one makes. The maternal instinct… I mean, it’s yours, it’s your thing and it’s not… in short, it cannot be judged. That said, I mean… if I think I’m going to die without… without having experienced it and without having tried that experience that for me it’s unique in the world, well, that scares me. If I think of not having children, the idea of not experiencing that thing which must be incredible, I mean, for me it must be something… I don’t know… something extraordinary. That kind of scares me, but right now I’m… I mean really… I don’t know. I don’t know if I want a child, if I don’t want it. I don’t know… In a way, you have them a little for… maybe selfishly, sometimes, so you don’t feel lonely, because you know they’ll be yours all their life. But I don’t agree with that either. There’s little of yours… that is, in this life, in my opinion, it is… it’s all free and… so, I don’t know. No, the thing that leaves me a little puzzled, really nowadays, is that more and more girls, more and more women, have trouble having a pregnancy, very much desired. I mean…more and more women really they face big problems, somehow. Then … inevitably, this also has an impact on your partner, that is, it is something that weighs on the relationship. Really… many scenarios open up.»
GABRIELLA: «I’m Gabriella and let’s say… I have a history of drug addiction, I started very early to use heroin, and I have contracted in the meantime hepatitis B and C. I say this because I think that this had an impact on me also regarding the choice anyway, at least for the first few years, about having a child. Apart from the problem with drug addiction, I wasn’t responsible enough to carry on with a pregnancy, anyway. I had a… I had an abortion, because I didn’t feel able to carry it through. Anyway, in those times, at the Drug Addiction Service, however, also the doctors, they did tend to scare you a bit about the pregnancy that you weren’t able to carry it forward, and you could still infect the baby. So, let’s just say that for a while I had a bit… put this aside… this thought, anyway, this instinct of motherhood. And I think that influenced me, in part. Then, of course, coming out of drug addiction, I also had a partner who, in any case, didn’t provide me with enough stability, him too, so… I mean, I didn’t feel like to give birth to a child. Then later, I found another partner and when we decided to try to have a baby, for me it was a little late because I was already 42 years old and I was running out of time. So, we tried for some time, but the baby wasn’t coming, so we also turned to a centre. I did some exams and they had seen that I was a bit past my prime so I would have had to go through the whole insemination process, with various hormonal treatments and so on which I didn’t feel like facing, because at that point I didn’t want to. And I have to be honest that now I’m happy anyway to be a childfree woman, because I’ve always had a good experience with this thing. If maybe at the beginning it may have had an impact on me, but certainly, given the way I am, maybe I needed to be a free woman too. In fact, I love to travel, I’ve traveled a lot and sometimes, I like to go out, so I’m always out. That is, I have had this lifestyle ever since I was 15 or 20, I mean, I’m always out and about, I can’t stay at home. So, a child would definitely stop me to be who I am now. I love my friends who have children and lately I was traveling with two women and one of them had a child who was one and a half years old. I’ve become very fond of this child and I really discovered the beauty to have a baby around every day for a month, as it had never happened to me, because many of my friends have no children, as so many of my friends come from the same background as me. I started only when I was older, to have friends with children, so for me, it was also the first time I’d had a baby nearby and I discovered the beauty of it. But I’m happy like this and I don’t regret anything, I travel, I go out. And I think anyway… I don’t work, so I do odd jobs, I’m not even in the work environment, I really had a bit of a life… let’s say a bit unusual, I did not work much. So, also in the working environment, I never wondered… if I could have or not problems. Where I worked, there were women who had no children, so in short… Let’s say, it was a bit like that. And with respect to surrogacy, I think there has to be freedom of choice. Unfortunately, there are situations where women do it for money, but I don’t feel…nor to judge, nor to… Honestly, I have never asked too many questions. I think that’s right, but I also think it would be good to make laws that give the possibility to adopt in a simpler way, because anyway there are so many children in the world. In the end, it’s true that one wants a baby with your partner’s sperm, but we should also try to step back a bit from this whole situation, since there are so many children in the world and if we were given the chance to adopt them, maybe, who knows… I would have adopted one when I was forty.»
ROSA: «I’ve realized that I… despite of the fact that administratively, I couldn’t have done it, not everyone can do it. We’re not… I think I have not been raised, I was not raised ready for adoption. And to some extent, this works on the fact that, call them bourgeois, call them those who have the money and they can afford it, these people, if they don’t have children they buy them like in a supermarket, they just go and buy them. That’s right. Well, I think we’re a… we are in a culture that does not educate to love… the other individual who is not part of you. And I realize it’s not easy, I would struggle, I would have struggled, too. You are on your own. In my opinion, it would take a culture… teach… teach it in school to get to know, how can I say, to also feel… others who are not your brothers, but who can be your brothers.»
ROBERTA: «I’m Roberta and I found out, thank you, that I’m a lunàdiga. Yes, it’s a bit like that. I don’t know, since I was a little girl, I had my grandmother always telling me: “Don’t get married, don’t have children, because then afterwards you’re forced to be a slave all your life. Have fun, go here, go there.” I mean, yeah. And so, well, it was a bit like that. Also, my first official boyfriend happened at the time when my older brother got his girlfriend pregnant and he had to get married. So, right after this, my mom took me to the gynecologist for the first time for the pill. So, this whole thing about children has always been a bit like that… like a monster, I don’t know what could have happened. Everyone has children, I wasn’t supposed to, but… Then I don’t know, I’ve always had people who I did not trust much, and I just didn’t feel like it to do it on my own or to do it regardless, I’ve never had that urge. Also, because then… I’ve always been a little crazy, so I’ve always liked… to enjoy my freedom. That’s that… I used to run away from the group too, imagine from my family, because it always bothered me waiting for others, or having that thing that you had to devote yourself to something all the time. And so that’s one thing that scared me a bit. Certainly, on the one hand there is also a lack, because you always say who knows what might have come up, or how you would be in that situation. Then I don’t know, at some point in my life I really made a choice to totally change everything and at the age of 27, I decided to go to university, having led a fairly normal life, it was something I felt I wanted to do as an experience. Later, I delved more into my artistic passion for theatre and so I’ve been many years in this world… so engaging and so for me it was just a thing… I haven’t even had many – let’s say – sentimental relationships, because for me it was something that took me away from my goals, almost a waste of time, on the one hand. Or something too demanding, I could never find my space in a relationship. This has always blocked me on one side, because anyway…I don’t know… I felt like I was justifying myself for wanting to do things. and I never liked this thing. So, I chose to live freely my whole existence, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster, but come on, I’m quite happy, let’s say. You don’t reach certain heights, but we travel through the world with curiosity, that’s it. I like it this way.»
LORENA: «My name is Lorena and I didn’t have children. I recently turned 41. And it wasn’t easy to accept this thing of not having children, for a number of reasons. First of all, because I love children very much, I worked a lot with children, I have a natural ability to communicate with them, so I also have – let’s say – a training in the field of clown theatre, so I’m often more comfortable in the language of children, that are simpler and work… They have their own logic in which I find myself more easily, compared to that of adults. I haven’t had any children, not because I chose it, simply many years ago I got pregnant with the wrong person. I realized it wasn’t what I wanted, to have a child in that way, with that person, with those circumstances, so, I decided to have an abortion. When then… I was with the person with whom I actually wanted to bring a new life, let’s say a few days after we made this decision, like let’s decide, yeah, let’s have a baby together. Yeah, I want to do that, too. After three days, the world came down and we broke up. Well, maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps it was not my destiny.
Well, it’s been suggested to me a thousand times: ‘I shall make you pregnant, I’ll make you pregnant.’ Oh my god… I should have been really… I probably had to be a perfect mother in the eyes of others. But I… I’ve always kind of had this belief that a child should be born from… from love. Or anyway from a synergy between two people. So, I never felt the desire as a woman to produce a child, because I have to produce a child otherwise, I will not be realized as a woman, otherwise I will not give a meaning to my existence in this world. There was a moment in my life, in which, around the age of 35, which was when I actually wanted to make this baby, in which this paranoia came to haunt me. Just this sense of saying… somehow, I’m not complete, I am not realized as a person and as a woman if I don’t have a child. Because in fact my friends, they were starting to have children, because in fact, as an only child, I felt that giving a child to my parents, meant giving meaning to their old age. So, I also felt this responsibility a lot to fill my parents’ lives, with something that would give it a meaning, right? And so, this aspect, psychologically, maybe had a greater impact on me, the aspect of not having given to my parents the possibility of becoming cute grandparents, rather than not…. rather than my personal realization.
Because, in reality, I often find myself talking to women who are about my age who have not had children, or maybe they’re a few years younger, who still think…”Oh my God, I’ll be able to do this only for a few more years!” “No, I have to do it now.” “I’m leaving this boyfriend because he can’t give me children. I have to find another one.” I know people who have actually ended healthy romantic relationships, simply because, “I’m 38 years old, I have to have a child. Do you want to have them? No? Then I’ll leave you.” They found another one, they used him as an inseminator and then goodbye and thank you. I mean… I don’t know, I’ve tried to deal with this, also inside myself, also with the advice that in these situations, these women, these friends, in these situations they ask you. And I’ve always been a little… I’ve always kind of felt… that when you want children at all costs this way, they are made to accomplish something that is missing inside the woman, but they aren’t really meant for themselves, are they? And so, this thing never resonated with me, I don’t think that children are the realization of you as a person.
Children, from my point of view, then I might be wrong, should be made for their own sake, they should be made for love. So, I have this memory of a very beautiful sentence that I was taught by an employer that I had, when I did environmental education with children, who said that for the Native Americans the parent was a bit like a bow, which is stretched to allow the arrow to go as far away as possible from them.
Therefore… perhaps having first gained some work experience with children and then having studied anyway theatre, clown art, therefore the path of authenticity, I look at children this way here, you know? So, I have this… awareness that sometimes the next generation is meant to do something that you didn’t do yourself and has the chance to contribute something to the world in turn. So, probably because I’m an only child, so maybe it’s all tangled up, regarding what you can do for your parents. There’s this sense that the parent expects something from you, the parent expects care in their old age, a whole bunch of stuff. So, I’m very sorry of this attitude towards children which are something to do with the parent and not with themselves. In fact, I ask myself not to be so selfish and petty, to think that a child has to do with myself, with myself only as a woman. No, I feel that… I hear this loud and clear. I don’t feel like I’ve missed motherhood just because I didn’t have kids, because I still have this love for helping people grow as self-aware individuals. And I try to give it to the kids of the people around me, to the many children of my friends, when I teach children juggling or theatre, when I did labs and I also have this dream to work with the neglected childhood. Talking about motherhood and work, not having children, I can’t say for certain, in fact, having chosen a course of study in the arts, going very much against what was the genealogy of my tree, so doing all this work alone, because I have no one previously in my women’s tree who have neither worked, nor chosen professional paths that satisfied them. So, I have women in my tree who raised more or less five children each. My mother, who had been advised against having children because of a physical problem, but she decided to go ahead with it anyway because, in her mind, for what her tree was, probably not having children meant to be nothing. And so she anyway… partly because she wanted to bring some life to her marriage, partly because she wanted to have a meaning as a human being on this planet, she challenged her health, actually endangered it, risking to end up on a wheelchair, but she still decided to have a daughter that would be me. Yes, that would be me!
Then I thought about it a lot, because, well, I’ve also been given some feedbacks with respect to a pregnancy made with someone who says to you: “You shouldn’t have children because you run risks of this kind, but you know that…” Then I was told, look, this woman was afraid, while she was pregnant, that you could have consequences. Then, I actually processed it over time, in her own way, she was afraid, but she did it anyway. So, her love was greater than her fear, which psychologically is something I tell myself when I have to give myself strength. Her love has been greater of her limit, of her fear.
And so, back to the work theme, as a matter of fact, I’m already in a precarious situation, because I never succeeded much to be part of the work dynamics that could be really alien at the level… on a soul level. So, after a while, the call comes back strongly, that I do need something I can throw myself into, don’t I? I wonder, if I had a child, if I would have agreed to take the risks that I continually run, which I bear alone, on my own shoulders. And from time to time, I look at my friends who have children and on the one hand there is a kind of … in quotation marks, envy of their motivation. In the sense that a mother, to feed her child, she would climb up a rocky mountain, with the sheer drop below, wouldn’t she? So, when there’s no money, a woman who must feed her child she does anything she juggles between jobs, she reinvents herself, that is… it is really amazing what a mother can do for her child. Isn’t that so? When instead you are on your own, you give yourself more time, you allow yourself more… you make different excuses, whereas when a person must take care of another one, you really can be a tank in terms of how you manage the practical things you need. And so, nothing really, I would not have been able to lead the kind of life that I have always allowed myself to live, with all this space to listen to myself. Regarding the issue of the uterus, regarding surrogacy. I haven’t heard talking about it much, mainly I’ve heard about the Indian women who of course for an economic need, they rent their uterus to these European women who, on the other hand, cannot have children. Well, so… I still see it as linked to class dynamics, so in that case there is no… that is, I perceive it as a bourgeois desire, to be honest. What I mean is… why do you want at all costs to have a baby if this baby doesn’t come, to such an extent… to the extent of having to carry it inside another person’s body when you could… in fact there are… many children who have a neglected childhood. So then, actually a child, I’m convinced, it’s not just your biological child, but it’s also, in quotation marks, that person to which you dedicate your time, your knowledge, your love, your care, to allow it to grow and become a person as beautiful and conscious in this world, who can sow in turn something beautiful. So, it doesn’t… So, this obsession with genetics doesn’t sit well with me.
So, the child is mine if it has my chromosomes and those of my partner. In my opinion, if one has the desire to take care and give love to someone else, to grow something, they can do it without resorting to all these tricks which in fact are the product of a bourgeois society that grants them to you, because in nature, you wouldn’t go through so much trouble. My humble and modest opinion, I can be wrong, with respect for everyone.»
VIRGINA: «Oh well, never mind, we’ll just do it later anyway. Coming full circle. So, I’m Virginia, I’m 32 and have two daughters. I am myself the third daughter… and I’ve always thought that I would have had children, I’ve always wanted them, since I was young. I had… since I was young, a stable relationship. I would have done them right away, luckily I didn’t, because I’ve done so many other things and I am very happy to have done them. And then, I had my first daughter when the time was right. That is, when the time had come for me to consider also things around me, my possibilities… In short, make a more complex reasoning, apart from the instinctive fact of saying, yes I want a child. I mean, it wasn’t even because I loved children, you know? It had nothing to do with the children, I mean, I just wanted a child. I wanted my body to go through pregnancy, feel this change, this strong experience. And then, let’s see. I’ve never had any relationships with children, because being the third child at home I haven’t had children younger than me and so I don’t know, so it was also a bit of a novelty. However, having found the right place, the right time, I was pretty sure about saying… I’m having a child now. Also my partner said yes, you are the right person to… to whom I can donate my seed to have a child: “Yeah, I’m in, let’s do it.” And so, nothing, the first daughter… And it was all very… very much… It’s not that I had any great expectations, I didn’t have high expectations on this, it was just something I wanted deep inside, that I felt and that was a little yes… like… like I felt it, that is, it met my expectations, that’s it. It’s not just having them per se, because from then on, from the day they are born onwards, it’s another world. Because you have to relate to another person, you have to raise them, you have to… In addition to meeting their needs, which is an instinct, and for me, perhaps this was also the naturalness of it all, of my instinct, in other words, going along with these things: I don’t know… sleeping, breastfeeding… meet all these needs, like this. Then, they grow up and there are even more needs, and there will be more in the future I don’t know now, I have no idea. Then, ok… after the first daughter… one for me could not be enough, because then there too… I don’t know, another one… And I knew it, I mean… as something… I don’t know, maybe because my mother had 3 children, and then so do I. My siblings didn’t, they didn’t want them, I did. It is important. And so… so then comes another daughter and again go along with this dynamic of… looking after the children and… and bringing up another life, so to keep up with all the needs of another life besides your own. That is, because then at the same time you have to go ahead with their life and with yours. And this is connected maybe to the work issue that… Uh, I don’t know. Probably for me this is my job, that is, this is the job now, looking after the kids. Looking after the children and learn how to do it, because… nothing is taken for granted and it’s not a knowledge that they teach you in school, it is not something that… that is handed down. I don’t know, my mum treated me in a certain way, her mom deals with her in a totally different way. For example, my grandmother, she has always worked and they, the daughters adjusted to that. My mom never worked, that is, she worked before and then stopped to look after us kids. Then, she suffered because she didn’t work and after having three children, so a work break of about… 28 years, many years, to look after us kids. Anyway, getting back to work was a difficult thing, to reintegrate into the world.
And so, I’m kind of in the middle, because working for me isn’t… well, it is a desire that I have, that I need to also get out of these dynamics… family dynamics, commitment dynamics, you know? Do something else, go out without any burden, go to work but at the same time I didn’t… I mean, I don’t feel the weight… to say no, I’ve had children, now I’m staying with them, I mean… I don’t leave them with someone else because I want to do something else, right? If not in given situations which, however, are not so simple if you don’t have a context around you that supports you. And I have it, though, I mean, anyway… So yes, well, I’m kind of in the middle of this thing. I don’t want to wait to be totally out of the working world, to start working again when I won’t know how to do it anymore, where to start, who to call, but at the same time…. I mean, the situations in which you can go with children… you say look, I’m taking my kid with me, she won’t be a bother. No, no thanks. Ok. In other words, you can babysit, there’s not much else you can do.»
GIULIA: «Lorena talked about the grandparent thing, right? I mean, my parents might have… I mean, this desire to have a child also for them, right? So, this in my opinion is a bit the same concept of surrogacy. That is, women in a patriarchal society, they’re always used to having this thing. Someone who tells her “Can you make me a child for this or that reason.” So, the fact that we are so shocked bu the idea of surrogate mothers… how can I say it… to lend your uterus… in my opinion the most terrible thing is precisely the exploitation from an economic point of view, as you say, right? Saying is a bad thing because existentially it becomes a bit like, I don’t know, selling your body for prostitution. It is an alienation of your own soul by yourself to do a job in a certain way, because the body feels it. And so at the same time, there are so many women who had children, in fact, to please the parents, to please their partners and all things like that, who then often found themselves, vice versa with this child coming out of them and they were like, “but who the fuck is this. “ You know?” I mean, not necessarily the idea… I agree absolutely with the feminists… modern feminists, like de Beauvoir, you know? But why do we have to start from the idea that motherhood is a natural instinct? This is all bullshit. It’s a culturally invented thing from a certain type of society. Then, of course, we talked a lot about this aspect of our culture. That is, we live in a capitalist, atomic, individualistic society, where I as a woman live alone and I make my choice to have my child. No, just like that. While there are many other societies and cultures, better, in my opinion, than ours, where this choice is not necessarily: I do this thing alone, my partner and I do this. Rather it is me within the community where I can do this thing, that is, from a natural point of view, it’s also really more realistic for human beings. That is, having a child alone, that is, in nature, I don’t know… as a human being it’s not like you go that far… That is, if you do it in a group, yes, because when there’s a child, actually, even if you only have one and if you do one at a time, then they have this very long care, more or less, it’s not that they walk like herbivores after an hour. They take a long time, that is, I mean, you have to carry it with you, it’s fragile. I mean, a lot of… And yet, precisely, rightly as they said, you have a bit of a problem with saying, and what about me? When it’s my turn, right? Something that is never said in the preparatory courses is that then you, when you have the new-born child you won’t even be able to have a shower. You would say…what do you mean? You wouldn’t even know how to cook. Maybe yes, just because you’re lucky, you have a partner, a good husband or a girlfriend and so on. But I mean… not even more than that, because even that it impacts the relationship a lot. And it is not said that I, for example, it was a very strong gender polarization, like, do I have to do everything? Basically, you are not good for anything?»
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