An MP for Premier Giorgia Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party has said motherhood should be the utmost aspiration for Italian women sparking a row amid opposition claims FdI wants to take Italy back to the Middle Ages.
Lavinia Mennuni said on social media: "The first aspiration of girls must be to be mothers.
"There is a need, a mission to bring children into the world, who will be the future citizens and Italians".
She said the time had come to make having babies "cool again" for wive and girlfriends.
In response, populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) deputy leader and former Turin mayor Chiara Appendino said: "Why does Fratelli d'Italia have this nostalgia for the Middle Ages?" And Raffaella Paita of the centrist Italia Viva (IV) spoke of "embarrassing backwardness". adding that "in Mennuni's words (there are) echoes of ideas of an obscurantist past".
Meloni has unveiled plans to boost Italy's flagging birth rate, making it the prime mission of the families minister, while the premier's brother-in-law, Farm Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, caused a stir by saying Italians were being ethnically replaced by migrants.
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