Eleven years ago, photos of MEP Licia Ronzulli in court with her daughter, who is only a few weeks old, went around the world. For centuries, only men were in power, but when women came, it was like a revolution. There were also those who were worried about some “contamination” of the institutional world by the world of care and family, with which new arrivals were traditionally associated, the excessive exposure of the female body, the loss of “seriousness”, assessed according to the canons of strictly male. A certain legacy has survived to this day, if you think that only yesterday the Regulatory Council Number decided that deputies will be able to breastfeed their sons and daughters up to the age of one year right in the chamber, during parliamentary work.

The request was submitted last July on the agenda of M5S MP Gilda Sportiello. Until now, Italy has had a clear ban: it was not allowed to bring children into the courtroom, given that internal rules prohibit entry into the chamber to all those who do not have a role in the meeting. Thus, those who wanted to breastfeed had no choice but to do so elsewhere or stay at home. The problem was tangible, and some deputies were forced to miss meetings for several months. “Children cannot enter Montecitorio”, – said the MP Vanessa Kamani, – and every three hours I have to breastfeed Pietro, who is three months old. I thought to take him with me, like Anya, a two-year-old, but there is no nursery, no children’s area. “

Now, with the change in the regulation, it will be possible to make a request for a permit in derogation from the ban, getting the opportunity to bring children up to a year into the class. Infants may be breastfed at some stations in the last row of the half-cycle, which has remained mostly empty after the reduction in the number of Parliamentarians, or “in a reserved gallery previously and specially designated by the College of Quaestors”. “Thus,” Sportiello said, “full participation in parliamentary work is allowed, and MPs will no longer be forced to choose whether to remain in the House or breastfeed at such a delicate moment as the first year of a child’s life. . That’s the main thing.”