Why Italy’s Latest Sex Education Bill Puts Child Abuse Prevention At Risk: A Parent’s Guide
Last Wednesday, I waited outside my 10-year-old daughter Giulia’s primary school in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood, leaning against a scuffed lamppost covered in street art and picking crumbs off a hazelnut cornetto I’d grabbed from the bar down the block. My friend Mara pulled up beside me, scrolling so fast on her phone her thumb looked blurry. Mara’s a pediatric nurse who’s led free sexual abuse prevention workshops at local primary schools for 12 years, so I knew whatever she was looking at wasn’t good. “They just passed the final version,” she said, and didn’t need to say more. I already knew what it did.
She explained that the school board had just sent out an email: all schools must cut any programming that could be classified as “gender propaganda” under the new bill, or lose 10% of their annual state funding. The problem is the bill’s definition of “gender propaganda” is so vague it includes any discussion of gender norms that aren’t strictly tied to biological sex at birth. And nearly every evidence-based abuse prevention program used in Italian schools today ties lessons about body autonomy to challenging rigid gender norms. So schools are dropping all of Mara’s workshops, and most other formal prevention programming, just to be safe. That’s the core of what no one’s talking about enough: this new bill conflates teaching gender flexibility with harming kids, and in the process, it’s stripping kids of the very tools that protect them from actual abuse.
I remembered when Mara came to Giulia’s class two years ago. Giulia came home chattering that afternoon, dropped her backpack on the kitchen floor and said, “Mara said I don’t have to let Uncle Nino tickle my tummy even if he’s family and he says it’s just a joke.” That line stuck with me, because when I was Giulia’s age, no one told me that. I was taught to be polite, to not make a fuss, to let adult relatives do what they wanted. That one 30-second line from Mara’s workshop gave Giulia permission to protect herself, something I never had at her age. What I didn’t remember until Mara reminded me that Wednesday was that the 45-minute workshop also spent 5 minutes talking about how it’s okay for boys to like ballet and girls to like soccer, and that no one gets to tell you what you have to like or how you have to act based on what body you were born into. That 5 minutes is what got the whole workshop labeled propaganda.
It’s easy to get tangled up in the political back and forth of this bill, but what’s stuck with me most is how this conflation hurts actual kids. Rigid gender norms make kids more vulnerable to abuse, full stop. We teach girls they have to be polite and compliant, so they don’t speak up when someone touches them in a way they don’t like. We teach boys they have to be tough and not show weakness, so they don’t ask for help after abuse happens. By cutting any discussion of flexible gender norms from prevention programming, we’re cutting the part that actually makes prevention work.
None of us can reverse this bill right now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do this work ourselves, in small daily moments that don’t require school funding or formal approval. I’ve started weaving these lessons into ordinary interactions, and it doesn’t take any extra time or planning. When Giulia’s cousin came over last month and teased her for wearing cargo pants instead of a dress to our family barbecue, I didn’t just brush the comment off to keep the peace. I said, “Giulia picks what clothes she wants to wear, because that’s her body, and she gets to decide what feels good for her.” That one sentence does two things: it pushes back on rigid gender norms, and it reinforces that she has full control over her own body — the core of abuse prevention.
For teachers I know who are worried about losing funding, they’re doing small, low-risk things too. My cousin Lucia teaches middle school outside Naples, and she doesn’t do a formal workshop on body safety anymore that would show up on a curriculum review. Instead, when a kid says they don’t want to hug a visiting parent at the school holiday concert, she steps in right away and says, “Let’s give them space, they don’t feel like a hug today — how about a high five instead?” That models body autonomy for every kid in the room, and it’s just a normal interaction, so it can’t get the school in trouble.
Another small habit I’ve picked up: once a month, I ask Giulia, “Is there any adult who’s touched you lately that made you feel weird, even if it was just a handshake or a hug?” I don’t make a big deal out of it, I ask while we’re folding laundry or walking our rescue dog around the block. That keeps the conversation open, so she knows she can come to me if something happens, no matter what the school teaches.
Last Saturday, Mara came over for cacio e pepe, and she laid out her revised workshop plans on my kitchen table. She’s cut out all the explicit text that mentions gender by name, and just weaves the lessons about flexibility into talks about body autonomy. It’s not what she wants, it’s less effective than the full workshop she spent years refining, but it’s better than nothing. We sat there after eating, drinking cold lemonade, watching Giulia and Mara’s 11-year-old son climb the gnarled oak tree in the park down the street. No one I know has a big, neat solution to this bad law right now. We’re just adjusting, doing the work one small conversation at a time, because protecting kids matters more than following rules that don’t serve them. It’s messy, it’s extra work, and there’s no telling how this will play out for the next generation of kids in Italian schools. But for now, that’s all we can do.
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