Bonito Mussolini established a dictatorship in 1926, 3 years after forming the National Fascist Party. His goal back then was to destroy any political opposition against him and to create a powerful totalitarian state. In Mussolini's time in politics, he searched for many ways to empower the state because of his fascist beliefs of nationalism. Italians followed his orders because they believed in him and the cult of personality; they believed the Duce was always right. He created new regulations for the National Organization for the Protection of Mother's and Children on December 10, 1925 (1).
Shortly after, in 1927, Mussolini added on to them and introduced a number of policies to increase reproduction in Italy. His Fascist Italy's population program called for an increase in birth rates and overall population; however, this was later met with opposition from the poor and women, causing Mussolini's policy to dissipate and end in failure. Mussolini largely supported his new policies over Italy's reproduction rate and encouraged the mass population to follow them. He saw these policies as a way to strengthen fascist Italy's standing among the other European countries and become a European superpower.A decree made for the National Organization for the Protection of Mother's and Children stated that they would protect woman during their pregnancies, help in caring for children in needy families until they were five, protect children with mental and physical disabilities up to age 18, create new scientific methods for caring for children's health, and build clinics for overseeing pregnant mothers and their infants (1). Mussolini created these policies to show how far the government was willing to aid in increasing the birth rates in Italy.
He wanted to prove that giving birth would be a benefit towards the state.Some of the population was still doubtful until A. Millionaire, a professor of statistics, found statistics that childbirths would overall benefit the state. He states in his report for the Central Institute of Statistics that the improvement of a state's economic standing compared to other countries ultimately rests in the decision of having children, even if such state was to rid of all their economic troubles (3). Given proof of how an increase in birth rates could benefit Italy's economy, people accepted Mussolini's policy and gave it a chance.
Italy's general population followed the policy and showed Mussolini how strongly they believed in Italy's potential. For example, a middle-class couple sent a picture of them and their twelve children to Mussolini (11). People wanted to show their loyalty and trust in Mussolini's dictatorship. In later years, Mussolini took more of an aggressive approach towards his new policies. He gave a speech in 1934 about how a woman's Job is to give birth to children and take care of them; they should not be working (5). According to him, a woman's work would become a disadvantage to Italy.
Women who work would put men out of a Job, take way their dignity, and develop and independence contrary to Mussolini's fascist belief (5). Mussolini used his speech to take away women's right to work while the men were at war. He wanted it to be that a woman's only Job was to give birth and raise their children. A year after, in 1935, a fascist party magazine called Motherhood and Childhood released an article supporting the new policies.
It stated that without mothers producing centre, economic clean was soon to Tallow (6). Mussolini's influence spread and created a fascist Italy state.There were people in Italy who lived and followed Mussolini's policies to the note, but in following years after the policy was first established a majority of the state spoke up against Mussolini with negative criticism. A majority of Italy's population, especially the women and poor, found Mussolini's policies to be unreasonable. Pitter Batter took a scientific towards disproving the policies effectiveness. He wrote an article in the Journal of Corporatist Economy and the Social Sciences concerning the poor and their struggles to support their small families.
Mussolini's policy would mean the poor had to have more children when hey had difficulty supporting one or two kids (2). Batter's fear was that this policy could devastate the lower classes and, instead of building the economy, cause an economic depression in the state. In 1933, a man named Cottage Slavering wrote an article called, "Do Italian Women Obey Mussolini? " (4). At the time, Salaaming was a political refugee living in the US. He was worried about the measures Mussolini and the Italian government would take in order to create his desired totalitarian state.He discussed in his article about one of Italy's studies about how bigger women have ore babies.
Salaaming makes light of the fact that Mussolini could one day demand women to weigh over 300 pounds and have the more slender women shot by firing squad (4). He thought that Mussolini would go to such extreme measures if he ever thought a situation called for it. The criticism against Mussolini's policies stretched as far as the United States as Calcimine's voice in his article showed. Another article written later in the fascist magazine Motherhood and Childhood was about a 1930 law code prohibiting association with contraceptives (9).Women could not use drugs ND pharmaceutical items to avoid and prevent pregnancy. Authors would continue to write articles about Mussolini's policies and their harmful effects on society.
People would eventually take matters into their own hands and write their own letters and stories about the policies. Mussolini's measures were growing more outrageous and the public began speaking more openly. A letter was sent to Mussolini's daughter, Contents Deed Mussolini Chain, on November 12, 1940 with the request to discuss with her father about his policies. She was a mother of 11 kids and suffered from poverty (10).The deter was a formal request to alleviate her duties from Mussolini's policies.
Her husband also went to fight in the war so she was raising those kids by herself. The policy to her was a detriment to her lifestyle because it required her to have more children than she could support. She was only one person out of everyone in the lower classes who could not support their families, and Mussolini's policies were driving them into more debt like Pitter Batter thought they would. In 1977, about 32 years after Mussolini's death, Deed Chain wrote her memoirs of the sass's in an autobiography called My Truth.
An excerpt from this autobiography describes how Deed Chain left China and returned to Italy. She had a baby for about 2 years and was already pregnant because of her father's policies placed (7). Deed Chain was furious from having to leave her peaceful life because of her father's fascist ideals for the state. Mussolini's Italy, including his own daughter, was fed up with his policies, as it seemed that people's rights were slowly taken away one by one.
In ten end, Mussolini's Attacks Italy population policy Tales I en polices Electroplates and people went back to their lives.There were reasons why the population policy failed other than the fact that a majority disagreed with them. In 1937, Paolo Roan, a journalist during Mussolini's reign, wrote about Mussolini's policies and the changing society's effects on them in his book The Demographic Policy of Bonito Mussolini (8). Roan talks about how women's society is changing as they are becoming more independent. As women gained more rights and independence slowly over time, Mussolini lost his reasoning that they were subservient to men. Around this time the woman's rights movement recently ended and empowered women around the globe.
They were involved in manual and intellectual labor, participated in sports, and even abused alcohol on their own accord (8). Along with these actions, the Italian women naturally felt they weren't obliged to follow Mussolini's population policies. A statistics record created in 1961 revealed that from 1921 to 1945 the birth rate in Italy as a whole slowly declined. Every 4 years in Italy, the regional birth rates per 1,000 inhabitants lost an average of 2.
5% of the population (12). Mussolini's policies did not help increase the overall birth rate; they only created tension between him and the or and women of Italy.The population policies eventually were taken out because of their failures in changing fascist Italy's economy for the better. Mussolini's policies were accepted at first and over time the majority of people in Italy saw flaws in his ideas.
Each of his policies was meant to create a stronger totalitarian state and boost the economy to make Italy a superpower in Europe. The policies were filled with good intent as they protected pregnant women and their children despite economic status and physical or mental disabilities to increase the population's birth rate.
