Franceschini's idea: "a law to give children only their mother's surname"

A law to allow children to take only their mother’s surname. This is the proposal of former culture minister Dario Franceschini, holder of the Collegio Romano from 2014 to 2018 and then again from 2019 to 2022. For now it is just an idea, but Franceschini is intent on making it a real bill to be presented in the Senate. The idea was explained at an assembly of the PD parliamentary group on the sidelines of a discussion in the Senate on the very issue of double surnames.

“To children only the mother’s surname,” Franceschini tweeted earlier on his X account. “Instead of creating endless problems with the management of double surnames, after centuries in which children took their father’s surname, we establish that from the new law they will take only their mother’s surname. It’s a simple thing and also a compensation for a centuries-old injustice that had not only symbolic value but was one of the cultural sources of gender inequality.”

How the double surname works in Italy today

Until a few years ago, newborns in Italy, as is well known, took their father’s surname, based on Article 231 of the Civil Code, which states that a husband is the father of a child conceived or born during marriage. However, two Constitutional Court rulings have challenged this rule. The first, dated Dec. 21, 2016, called the current system of surname attribution a “legacy of a patriarchal conception of the family, which has its roots in Romanesque family law, and of a outdated marital power, no longer consistent with the principles of the legal system and the constitutional value of equality between men and women.” The Court found such discipline to be contrary to Article 2 of the Constitution, in that it would violate the right to personal identity “which finds its first and immediate response precisely in the name and which, within the social consensus, identifies the origins of each person. From this would follow the right of the individual to have the identifying marks of both parental branches recognized.”

As of 2016, therefore, it became possible to add the mother’s surname to the child, although only after the father’s. It was also not possible to decide the order or give only the mother’s surname, except in cases accepted by the Prefecture. The rule changed further in 2022, with the Constitutional Court’s decision of April 27, 2022, following which it was ruled that the child would either take the surname of both parents in the order agreed upon by them, or take only one (either the father’s or the mother’s) based on a common agreement between the parents. So, for children born after June 1, 2022 (the date of publication of the decision in the Official Gazette) it was possible to request that the new rule be applied. Those who were born before this date and want to add their mother’s surname can instead apply to the Prefecture: if the application is granted, the mother’s surname will be added in all documents.

Franceschini's idea: "a law to give children only their mother's surname"

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