The rhetoric of child well-being in the Italian public debate on same-sex parenting and gender equality education 1

Abstract

Over the last ten years, the central importance of children’s best interests and well-being has emerged as one of the most revealing aspects of two key areas of public debate, namely discussion around the diffusion of a so-called ‘gender ideology’ in schools and its impact on young people, and the controversy surrounding the recognition of homosexual parenting and its possible effects on society, the family and children’s well-being. In this chapter, we explore how children are positioned and represented in the public debate surrounding these two gender and family-diversity issues in Italy. Our analysis suggests that, within both the progressively oriented approval of adoption by same-sex parents and the conservative ‘anti-gender’ campaigns against same-sex couples and gender education, children are cast as passive, manipulable actors who need protection, rather than as subjects with specific experiences and narratives of family construction, intimate relationships and social identities.