A centre-left Italian politician has sparked controversy with a proposal to automatically assign babies their mother’s surname.
Democratic Party Senator Dario Franceschini, a former Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities, said his proposed measure would serve as "a compensation for a centuries-old injustice", in a post shared on X.
As he argued for a break from the tradition of assigning newborns their father's surnames, Franceschini said this convention was a "cultural source" for gender inequality.
In response, Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the far-right Lega party Matteo Salvini mocked Franceschini's proposal on X, labelling it "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," Salvini added.
Meanwhile, Federico Mollicone, who serves in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, said 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.
While it is relatively common in European countries such as Spain and Portugal for children to bear both of their parents' surnames, the father's surname typically comes first.
A recurring debate
This is not the first time that the surname issue has taken hold in Italy.
In 2022, a judgement issued by Italy's Constitutional Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to automatically assign a father's surname to a baby. Instead, it offered two alternatives: either babies should either 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.
Yet when Meloni's government came to power in October 2022, her government did not take any action to draft legislation which would implement the ruling.
Since taking office, Meloni has staunchly defended "traditional" Catholic families and values, with her policies harshly impacting families who do not fit into this category.
In turn, she has 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.
