Riccardo, let’s start from the beginning: what prompted you to write The Thousand and One Childhoods?
The Thousand and One Childhoods is a book that comes from the deep listening of an adult to children, with the depth, clarity and ability to tell the stories that they have, if only you put yourself at their level. A paediatrician, in the course of his professional life, follows many of them for a long time, often until adolescence. Each of them has a story, a world, a unicum. I began collecting and writing their stories many years ago, but only later did I realize that they represented precious testimonies. I am thinking of migrant children and adolescents: certain traumas, certain journeys of theirs, the signs of torture after passing through Libyan prisons are not just stories but documents that after some time will have all the weight and historical value of “documents collected in the field”. It is from these “stories” that I began to reflect on childhood, dialoguing with experts, exploring the entire span of the children’s journey.
In fact, your entire book is crossed by a metaphor that I would say is very yours: that of the sea voyage…
The metaphor of navigation is precious, it contains a thousand ideas, and I kept it throughout the text. The sea journey is the one that in my opinion most resembles the unpredictability of life. From the calm waters of the small maternal lake, each child crosses a thousand seas to the perilous sea of adolescence, before landing in the lands of adult life. This idea of travel, moreover, makes us overcome the categorization between adults and children and reminds us that there is only one helmsman and it is us, we have simply changed ages; But an adult-child contrast makes no sense. The journey therefore gives us back that look that we paediatricians call “longitudinal”: what happens in childhood will remain forever, even in adult life. When we prove incapable of designing a future society on a child’s scale we are betraying the child we have been.
What are the stormy seas that can put a strain on our children’s development today?
There are many stormy seas to sail for “our children”. I am thinking, for example, of the phenomenon of “early adultization”: it is not right to let children disembark too soon from the magical ship of childhood, because this is a unique time to deposit in the piggy bank of their plastic and absorbing mind, experiences, knowledge, culture, beauty, free play, art, reading, fairy tales, good lifestyles; offer meaningful and affectionate relationships. A precious baggage that will remain for a lifetime. Let us remember that, if this is a possible option for us, for millions of children it is not. I think of child brides, a practice permitted in many countries of the world, which closes the door of childhood to them forever; or the kids who find themselves at 8 or 9 years old digging rare earths for our cell phones in mines, weaving carpets, sewing shoes. Yet, something similar happens here too, although much less serious, of course; but it is still a subtle form of violence against children.
Have you met any children who have experienced these things?
I saw them when I made my business trips to Cameroon and Uganda. We will never see those children, unless we go there, and it is an experience that leaves its mark. On the other hand, many “unaccompanied foreign minors” arrive in Europe, young people fleeing from very poor worlds, from war and famine, in whom the family invests by getting into debt with traffickers to offer them a chance and expecting to receive money when, after terrible journeys, they start working.
One thing you strongly emphasize is that in general it is difficult to put children and their rights at the centre of political discourse and action…
Yes, that’s right. Let’s not think of them only as the object of medical care, let’s see them as adults of the future, they must be thought of and put back at the centre of our thoughts, choices, investments, strategies, by all professionals. I think of urban planners: a city, a school, a street may or may not be child-friendly, it depends on us. The city of the future will be inhabited by today’s children; this is the basic concept! In my opinion, the real politician is not the one who makes the law for the next six months, but who knows how to plan a society of the future; it is the most uncomfortable politics, because it does not bring great satisfaction in the immediate future, which needs courage, foresight and vision to imagine something that does not yet exist; A sustainable future, where environmental pollution is reduced and planet Earth is not completely destroyed. We are horrified and heartbroken for the fate of the children of Gaza and for the poorest but then our cities are unliveable for ours, there are no playgrounds to suit them, many schools are falling apart. And we continue not to make strict choices for them.
In the story you intertwine many voices and points of view: there is yours, that of your experience, there are the voices of the scholars with whom you enter into dialogue and then there are those of the children you have treated, with their stories. What did you learn from them? What can we learn from listening to children?
I consider The Thousand and One Childhoods a collective book. On my sailing ship I embarked as many voices as possible. I tried to be questioned by childhood scholars; I tried to open new interpretative openings. I’ll give you two examples.
Malinowski is an anthropologist who – like Marcel Mauss – has investigated the theme of gift and exchange as a promoter of social ties. In his Argonauts of the Western Pacific, he observed that in the Trobriand archipelago there was a ritual exchange between the islands (called “kula”), of red necklaces and white bracelets capable of creating society. When our children play at exchanging stickers or make markets, they are proposing something similar. “If I give you ten stickers, you give me a Scudetto.” The children’s economy is born from barter; it is functional to creating bonds and friendships. Instead, we adults risk ruining that magic by perhaps buying too many stickers all at once.
Another idea is that of the acorn, an intuition of the great Jungian psychoanalyst James Hillman. Each of us is born with our own acorn – call it a vocation, a design, a character – that every adult or parent should cherish and respect so that one day it can become a large, unique and unrepeatable tree. The word “custody” is beautiful: what does it mean? That it is important to protect them but with respect for the identity of that child. Keeping yourself at the right distance, leaving them free to make mistakes, try, start again.
From children I learned courage, sincerity, the ability to act in a prosocial way and without prejudice. Research tells us that as children we don’t care about skin colour or physical defects or handicaps. You can learn a lot from children, because they have a special way of looking at existence. The word educate comes from educěre, “extracting” what is there, not stuffing it with concepts and prescriptions. But it only works if we tune in to children by really listening to them, for a long time, carefully, taking them seriously.
Don’t you think that, sometimes, children scare us?
Yes, I agree. On the other hand, children are demanding, they require time, care, consistency of behaviour. It is not easy to be in front of a child, but it is a great opportunity for a good examination of conscience. Every child who is born disrupts our lives, creates roles and assigns tasks; suddenly you become parents, you create four grandparents, a brother or maybe a sister, others become uncles or cousins. Parenting is not a joke, it must be supported, it takes a “whole village” to educate a child. Then, we are also afraid of the child inside us, that child of which Jung speaks and who lives there. It is the dimension of lightness, curiosity, clarity, courage, creativity. As we become adults, we tend to position ourselves in that psychic dimension that Jung called the senex, with its propensity for stability and closure. We become a bit like Captain Hook and then, children come to tease the Peter Pan inside us. Let’s take this opportunity!
Finally, there is a political dimension to all this. All children – all of them, even those of the second generation of foreigners – with their volcanic minds and capable of new intuitions and inventions, represent a gold deposit, yet too little is said about it. We should invent “States-General of Childhood”, a whole adult society around childhood and ask ourselves: are we capable of planning the future starting from today’s children? Instead, pretending nothing has happened, we play war, only to discover that in Italy their accesses to psychiatric emergency rooms have tripled. With their mental distress, children are telling us something important. Will we be able to act, with courage and determination?
According to the latest report published by UNICEF, nearly half a million children in Europe and Central Asia live in shelters. On the other hand, Italy is opening to the possibility of international adoptions for singles, a proposal that has generated opposing and antithetical positions. In your book you talk about “family-port”, but also about an extended and widespread parenthood. What you mean?
The family-port is part of the metaphor of the sea. Those who go to sea know what a port is: it is the place of safety, from which you depart, transit and sooner or later return for mooring; where ships with their goods dock, exchanges and traffic take place. It is a very strong metaphorical place, if applied to the family, where a child makes a hull if his small ship has suffered damage, where he can go ashore, recover energy, leave for new places. The port-family is also a metaphor for widespread parenting. In the port you don’t just find two people, you find an entire community that welcomes. Today we know that parenthood is not only biological; It starts from there, but it can be enriched with a “cultural parenting”. Each of us can be a full parent, we can take care of a child in some way, even if he does not have children.
Regarding adoption, we must always remember that it is a matter of giving a second chance, giving a new family to a child who does not have one, who has lost it or has never had one. Not vice versa. This arises from the supreme interest of the child (art. 3 of the UN Convention on the Child). This is where it is necessary to start: to be able to offer that second chance as complete, adequate as possible. It is a delicate and complex discourse, impossible to dismiss in a few lines.
According to Save the Children’s XV Atlas of Childhood at Risk, there are 1 million 295 thousand children in absolute poverty in Italy, equal to 13.8% of the total. 8.5% of the total number of girls and boys lived in food poverty. 9.7% of the same age group experienced energy poverty, i.e. they lived in a house that was not adequately heated. Often these are the living conditions of many minors who are the children of immigrant families in our cities. What do these deprivations mean for their future?
Real and cultural poverty is a non-response to the fundamental rights of children. The absolute compass in this field is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Every poverty, real or cultural, clips the wings of those children who in the book I call “butterflies with lead wings”, they are the ones I see in my work every day. In Italy people don’t die, but these children fly little, low, at short range. They will do worse at school, and low schooling will lead to worse jobs; their health will be more fragile, due to junk food and dilapidated housing. Little sport, few books, few films, few fairy tales, little play, no sea or mountains: very serious educational poverty. This is the battle of Save the Children, with whom I collaborate a lot.
You call “ambassadors of distant worlds” the children of the second generation of migrants, who have the cultural imprinting of the family and the country of origin, but who grow up in Italy. In your experience, how can we promote their integration and, on the other hand, enhance their cultures of origin?
Based on the experience of the French ethno-psychiatrist Maria Rose Moro, the second generations live between two worlds. The “cultural cradle” of the mètisse (mestizo) children coincides with that of the family into which they are born, whose roots are Moroccan, Chinese, Afghan or Nigerian. They were born in Italy, but it is as if they lived for the first few years in a foreign embassy, breathing and absorbing food, culture, ideas, language, beliefs, myths and religions that coincide with those of their parents. Then, at a certain point, they leave the small world of the family, go to kindergarten and school, meet another civilization. And they learn the Italian language immediately, better than their parents. Thus, there is a “reversal of roles”, and the child, perhaps at the age of ten, masters the language and becomes the sage of the house.
Moro argues – and I agree – that it is necessary to save these two worlds of theirs, without putting them in opposition. Instead, the message that passes, often even at school, is: “We are the ones who finally teach you the right culture. Forget what your parents tell you.” But they remain children, they have a right to the love of their parents, whom they must be able to esteem. Often, during my visits, I try to enhance all this, I ask them to explain their religion or culture. And I see that the parents are very happy.
In a now multicultural Italy, there is no going back, migration must be managed and the sooner we do it, the better. Starting with children would be wise, and easier. In France, before us, they have experienced in the banlieues(suburbs) how much the desire for redemption of the generations that have felt excluded and whom we have not taken care of, has turned into radicalization, guerrilla warfare and urban violence. I’ll sell you a beautiful idea, I don’t remember where I heard it: “A city is safe if it cares about its inhabitants”. Starting with the children, the youngest inhabitants.
I would like to close this chat by quoting you. You write: “It is time for networks and alliances with parents and teachers, with non-governmental organizations and with civil society. The children belong to their family and are treated by paediatricians, but at the same time they belong to all of us: they are our common good.”
I fully confirm this statement here, which brings us back to the global village, to widespread parenting, to the beauty and luck of having children in the way and which, among other things, “save our souls” as Dostoevsky claimed.
And I would like to close by thanking you for this interview, in which you managed to bring out the deepest and most touching things about my work, my world, my passions. Fair winds to you, Tamara, and fair winds to Città Nuova, a magazine with which I have been collaborating for a long time, sharing its values, based on that ideal of a more fraternal, just and “international” world that is at the root of the Focolare and was the anticipatory dream of its founder, Chiara Lubich, who already spoke of multiculturalism and a united world in the 70s.
(Written by Tamara Pastorelli – www.cittanuova.it – © All rights reserved)
