1. Life as a gift in family ties
Talking about the gift of life implies, first of all, affirming that what is given is what we have not constructed, and for that reason is out of our control. Accepting life as a gift is not the same thing as manufacturing a product. As stated by Fabrice Hadjadj,[1] the product is manufactured outside oneself, according to a logic of control that allows to make a product without defects. A child, on the other hand, is hosted inside the mother’s body, which is deformed to make room for him/her and which is not in a logic of control, but in a logic of trust.
Moreover, the one who generates gives birth, gives life, but is in turn a child who has received it as a gift from his/her parents.
Birth, therefore, becomes part of the exchange between giving-receiving-returning that characterizes the family bond, overcoming the economic logic of social exchange (considered as the search for a balance between costs and benefits) and introducing the idea that the gift is always a “surplus” and is at the same time a debt that is shared by all generations, parents and children, who have received and who indirectly “give life back” by generating in turn. This dynamic appears as a central characteristic of the human condition.[2]
In the gift-debit polarity, we can find the original co-presence of the affective quality and the ethical quality, the “matris-munus” and the “patris-munus”, that is, the maternal gift and the paternal gift that are at the origin of the human being. The gift, in fact, is a characteristic of the family bond that is at its origin free, trustful and affective in nature. When this element of gratuitousness is absent, there is relational pathology in which people are uncapable of affection, and the other is used and exploited. But the gift coexists also with the other side of the coin, that is the debt and obligation, the ethical urgency to give back what has been received. Gratuitousness is a gift without a deadline, but not without expectations.
In a long multigenerational perspective, these components of trustful gift and owing debt are strongly interconnected, especially in the exchange between generations that accompanies a new birth. The role play that rigidly attributes to parents the component of the gift and to children the component of the debt is therefore false or at least partial. As we have said, in fact, parents, being themselves children, have also received life as a gift; thus, parents and children share both the gift and the debt. This reality of generational facts can, however, be psychologically distorted in favour of only one of the two aspects. For example, children may feel heavily indebted, crushed, and blamed with respect to their parents who gave them life, and the latter may consider themselves as those who have given and give without considering what they have received and receive from their children.
In healthy families, people reciprocate not only for a moral obligation, but because they are moved by the desire to give back/return. In these cases, one identifies with the source of the gift and is driven to give in turn.
From a psychic point of view, therefore, the process of identification is crucial. Thus, young parents, in order to pass on physical and psychic life to a new generation, should have had the opportunity to identify themselves, as children, with good, that is, donative sources. When such sources are not present, family members should be helped to forgive, thus recovering, through a self-reflective work that is the heart of a therapeutic experience, the ethical-affective substance that lies at the heart of the human being.
The symbolic exchange, typical of family relationships, consists in giving to the other what he/she needs: it is moved by the trust that the other will reciprocate with a similar coin when he/she can. One does not necessarily reap the fruits of what he/she has sown during one’s lifetime: rather, restitution occurs over generations. In order to capture the depth of family ties, one must be able to go beyond the present and one’s own life. This is the meaning of life as a gift.[3]
2. The child as a “choice” and as a “right”
However, this conception of life as a gift appears to be challenged by today’s culture. Today, rather than considering the child as a gift, we consider the child as a “choice” or as a “right” and we forget the intergenerational scope of generativity, adopting an individual perspective limited to the “here and now”. Such a perspective reflects only the position of the present generation (the choice and the right of parents) and does not consider the intergenerational chain in which the free gift received from previous generations is inserted, calling for taking responsibility for subsequent generations.
Today people choose whether, when and how to have a child and this, although advantageous from the point of view of the responsibility that accompanies the choice as opposed to the fatalism that accompanies destiny, also brings with it a series of critical consequences, which we can observe, for example, at the demographic level: the transition from a conception of childbirth experienced as a natural occurrence out of personal control, to an idea of birth as a rational planning of the timing and modalities of conception, has certainly contributed – at least in Italy – to the phenomenon of the progressive and unstoppable decline in births, to the raising of the age of primigravidae with a postponement of motherhood close to the threshold of 35 years and the consequent spread of the family model of the single child. People have children only when they believe there are all the conditions to raise them and only when they desire to have children.
The other dominant trend, which in turn derives from this idea of the child as a choice, is the increasing social acceptance of the conception of the child as a “right” or the “right to parenthood”. In this perspective, parenthood is no longer regarded as the adult’s possibility or willingness to accept a child as a gift, but as an option subject only to the adult’s desire (or claim), to such an extent that the impossibility of procreation is not tolerated and people are willing to use any means (from the exasperated medicalization of procreative intervention with medically assisted procreation, to ethically critical or legally borderline forms in the field of heterologous fertilization, as well as in the field of adoptions) to realize their desire of the child whose presence, at some point in their adult life, they claim the right.
In order to understand the challenges that these conceptions of parenthood imply from a psychological, educational and social point of view, it is necessary first of all to develop a reflection on the meaning of being a child and, therefore, conversely on the meaning of being a parent. In other words, we need to move from a descriptive level of the roles and functions of parents and children in the family to a reflection on parental and filial identity that starts from the existential question of who is a child, thus intercepting a question that concerns all of us, since the condition of a child is a human condition that is common to all of us.
3. Filial Identity
We could briefly say that the person, every person, is originally a child. But what does it mean to be a child? What are the characteristics of filial identity? We can affirm that filial identity implies different dimensions of the human being.[4]
First of all, in the experience of filiation there is the biological dimension represented by being generated and traceable through the concrete signs of physical resemblance, the inheritance of genetic traits, etc. In other words, being children is a matter of body.
The second dimension deals with the caregiving-educational domain: the survival and growth of the child depend on maternal care and protection, on the one hand, and on paternal norms, sense of limits and emancipatory drives, on the other. Being a child is therefore a matter of care and education.
A third component is what we might call the intergenerational dimension, which has to do with the family history of the child, the ties with parental networks, the transmission of family values, and allows the child to develop a “sense of We”, i.e., to develop a sense of belonging to a “lineage” by sharing the family history, traditions, customs and habits that derive from the encounter between two lineages, the maternal and paternal ones. In other words, being a child is a matter of lineages.
Finally, being children also has a social dimension. In fact, the child is not only the biological and educational “product” of a couple or a family lineage, but is a person who is “given to the world”, that is, made available to the world and to the social reality in which he or she is inserted. In our society, unfortunately, we are losing this broader meaning of this beautiful expression. Yet, being a child is also a matter of society and culture.
We could therefore say that the objective of those who generate is the protection of “being children” to all intents and purposes, that is, the protection of a condition of identity, constitutive and common to all human beings, which presupposes the presence of the different dimensions mentioned above. In fact, one is a child insofar as he/she is biologically conceived and generated by a parental couple (biological dimension); insofar as one is nurtured, cared for and helped to grow through responsible care (caregiving-educational dimension); insofar as one is made a member of a lineage and included in an intergenerational history (historical-intergenerational dimension); one is a child, finally, insofar as he/she is recognized in one’s own civil, social, ethnic and cultural belonging (cultural-social dimension).
When one or more of these dimensions is missing, the person runs the risk of not being able to fully realize his or her identity, which is constitutive of his or her very existence. It could be said that “one does not exist except than as a child, as a generated person”. For this reason, the social context takes charge and tries to compensate for any shortcomings in one or more of these dimensions (for example, with tools for protection and defence such as adoption and foster care), implicitly recognizing the value of the anthropological category of the child as “generated by a father and a mother within an intergenerational and social history”.
In other words, it might not be sufficient for a child to be cared for with regard to his or her purely biological needs, if his or her need to be guided or recognized as part of a family genealogy or supported in his or her social dimension is not respected.
The coexistence of these four “dimensions”, which define the deepest identity of being a child, must be guaranteed throughout the life path through the different transitions that the parent-child relationship goes through (from birth, early childhood, school age, adolescence, youth and adulthood): these dimensions can be transformed into concrete choices and behaviours in different ways, but the fundamental aspects will remain inalienable.
4. The child as a choice and the challenges to the caregiving-educational dimension
If we reflect on the current tendency to conceive the child as a “choice” and as a “right”, we can understand the consequences that derive from such a conception from the point of view of the parents’ duty to protect the filial identity and the complexity of the needs of each child as a person.
The child considered as a mere “choice” challenges, above all, the dimension of caregiving and education.
The decrease in the number of births and its character of a chosen and strongly desired event means that birth takes on the characteristics of a “high emotional concentration”. Parents end up investing too much in the few children they bring into the world.[5] By considering parenthood as a mere choice, they need their child to conform not only to the image of the “desired child”, but also to confirm their own parental identity: the child is at the centre, but is often experienced as an extension of themselves, as confirmation of their own parenthood and not as a unique, unrepeatable and irreducibly “other” person, with aspects of mystery and “unexpectedness”, typical of the gift and not of a voluntary choice. The current representation of childhood therefore sees the child as the “sovereign” or “idol” of the family. If such a conception may lead to a new sensitivity towards the child, his/her cognitive and affective world, it can also become a problem for children because they feel they have to respond to high expectations and a challenging self-image through which they unconsciously embody the need for realization of the parents from which it will be more difficult to detach themselves (see the phenomenon of the so-called “long family”: young-adult children “never leave” home) and which will also have consequences at the level of the educational style practiced, which, as stated by Daniel Marcelli[6] (2004), often risks to be aimed more at seducing (se-ducere), to please the child, to saturate and prevent his/her every need rather than oriented to the task of educating (ex-ducere). In this regard, we speak of “narcissistic puerocentrism”.
What is strongly challenged in this cultural climate is the parent-child asymmetry. The parental relationship should be traced back to a concept of the family as an encounter of differences. Only the encounter with the other (different from oneself) helps one to recognize oneself, to distinguish oneself and thus to grow. In particular, the parent-child relationship is, by definition, asymmetrical and “hierarchical” and not equal and “democratic”; therefore, it implies a clear assumption of educational responsibility by the adult towards the younger generations, a position that avoids the risks of indifferentiation and egalitarianism at all costs. The concept of “responsibility” is inscribed into the parent-child relationship: it is the preceding adult generations that must take responsibility for the younger ones. However, the risks of “parentification” and “adultization”, according to a veritable inversion of roles, are increasingly frequent in our culture of fragile and disoriented adults, often inclined to support themselves rather than their children on their journey. Also, at the core of this position there is a non-recognition of the “otherness” of the other and of his/her difference.[7]
The massive affective and cognitive investment into the child also leads, as a consequence, to a slowdown and difficulty in the process of detachment from the parent, which seems to be the salient characteristic of adolescence today, which is increasingly prolonged. Therefore, an indirect consequence of the narcissistic puerocentrism and the lack of intergenerational asymmetry that characterizes our social reality can be identified in the phenomenon of the so-called “long family”: young-adult children “never leave” home and the process of release and emancipation of the new generations from parental dependence seems to be increasingly slowed down, with all the psychological and social consequences that such a slowdown inevitably brings with it.
5. The child as a “right” and the challenge to the biological, intergenerational and social dimension
If the child as a choice mainly affects the dimension of caregiving and education, the child as a right, and especially its direct consequence of the search for the “child at all costs”, with the use of heterologous medically assisted procreation techniques, threatens instead the other dimensions of filiation, namely the biological, intergenerational and social dimension: in other words, the right to parenthood at all costs threatens the right of the child to have access to its origins and to fully develop its filial identity.
In fact, MAP techniques, especially heterologous ones, presuppose the inclusion of a “third party” within the parental couple of origin. And the issue is not insignificant from the point of view of the identity-related topic of the origin.
The increasingly frequent use of various medically assisted procreation techniques in order to have a child undoubtedly has also a positive side because it allows us to deal with the phenomenon of infertility with greater chances of success, but it also has many negative implications when the child is sought “at all costs”. In this regard, Simona Argentieri[8] (2014) accurately observes that too often “desire turns into obsession”. The child becomes a peremptory need for confirmation of identity and meaning of life in the service of which all vital energies are spent, in precise collusion with the “omnipotence of doctors”.[9] With respect to procreation, we have therefore moved from a situation of powerlessness and suffered destiny to a situation of control and defiance of destiny. Reproductive technologies push to give shape to hybris, to go beyond the limit that has always attracted humanity, with the risk of colluding with the omnipotent economy of the unconscious.
The procreative desire, in fact, is rooted in the unconscious, which is by its very nature intolerant of limits, and in order for it to fully realize its task of humanization, it must be associated with that shared responsibility that provides it with the right measure. It is impossible, therefore, with regard to this issue, to avoid the ethical component: “the desire is such only if combined with responsibility towards themselves and others, otherwise it is configured as a form of arbitrariness”.[10]
From the 1970s, the phenomenon of medically assisted procreation (MAP) has spread exponentially for different reasons: for the increase in infertility, for the right to parenthood claimed by homosexual couples, and for the emergence of an economic business of medical clinics and banks for the donation of gametes used by both homosexual and heterosexual couples.
There are many interventions available, among which we can distinguish homologous reproductive techniques, which consist in the artificial union of semen and egg belonging to the couple that will raise the child (in this case the unborn child will have the same genetic heritage of the parents), from heterologous reproductive techniques, which consist in the use of a gamete outside the couple (semen, egg, or embryo – in the best case the unborn child will have the genetic heritage of only one of the two parents). The practice of surrogacy is even more radical, as it involves a financial contract with a woman who agrees to carry a pregnancy to term on commission.
The use of MAP raises several legal, ethical and psychological issues and undoubtedly represents one of the most significant revolutions in parenting and filiation.[11]
Beyond the many problematic aspects that affect the relationship of the couple (eg. the intervention of a third party between the partners, the issue of procreative inequality, the invasiveness of the technique on the intimacy of the partners...) and especially the position of the woman (the risk of being dispossessed of her own motherhood, technologized, outsourced, instrumentalized and even commercialized, as in the case of the uterus for rent,[12] which are not the subject of this reflection, I would like to bring attention above all to the challenges for the children of MAP.
A fundamental problem concerns the couple’s choice of whether or not to reveal to the child the truth about the story of his/her conception. The psychological costs of family secrecy and, on the other hand, the advantages of knowing as soon as possible the truth about one’s own origins, in accordance with the child’s age, are considerable, especially on the sense of continuity in one’s identity.
In this regard, a special attention should be paid to those cases in which the couple makes use of an external donor, which is a necessity for the homosexual couple and sometimes also an option for sterile heterosexual couples. In these cases, the biological, intergenerational and social dimension are threatened by the secrecy on the donor’s identity and/or by the impossibility to trace one’s own origin to which the child is condemned. Such a threat has well-known negative consequences, as highlighted by research on adopted children. But let’s go a bit deeper into these topics.
In the available research on this issue,[13] the issue of the origins is confined to the topics of parents’ sincerity or secrecy on the type of conception, the child’s willingness to know the identity of the donor, and the frequency and type of contacts with him or her.
Unlike the past, nowadays the need to reveal the truth to children born from donation is widely recognized, so that many countries, in Europe and around the world, provided legal protection to the right of knowing the identity of the donor, generally upon coming of age. However, it is still possible for the couple to choose an anonymous donor. This choice is certainly less problematic for parents, as it removes the problems related to the involvement of the donor in family dynamics and to possible legal issues about the custody of the child, especially if a separation occurs. In this case, there is a potential conflict between the right of the couple and the right of the child to know his or her origins.
Research has shown that the child’s need for knowing is not only a matter of curiosity, but also a search for meaning about the child’s own history and an intense need to re-establish a bond with the parent who gave them life. In these children’s accounts we often find a search for physical similarity with the donor, his or her temperament and interests, as well as his or her family history and genetic inheritance (for example in terms of potential health problems). On a symbolic level, the genetic link immediately activates the genealogical dimension, that is the connection with previous generations. This, moreover, is the inherently human characteristic of the procreative act, in which the biological and mental levels are inextricably linked. This is why desires, motivations, expectations, fears and wounds circulate between parents (the “generators”) and children (the “generated”). It is therefore necessary to understand what dynamics these different pathways to parenthood create and leave as heritage, at least in parents’ and children’s imagination. This will help to recognize the challenges the new generations will face.
In this regard, the clinical and research tradition of adoption studies can provide useful insights on this issue.
Indeed, today’s research and clinical intervention on adoptive families have shown that the origins of the adoptive child need to be preserved (rather than cancelled) and that the “birth family” occupies a meaningful place in the minds and hearts of adopted children throughout their lives. Adoptive parents do not substitute the child’s family of origin, but rather take on the pain of the child’s origin, often wounded by traumatic experiences, and help repair it, by including the child into a new family history and genealogy. In adoption, the birth parent never disappears, his or her absence always generates suffering, to the point that adopted children often decide to return to their country of origin (in cases of international adoption) and search for their family members, birth parents and siblings. Adoption professionals know very well that this is a long and painful process that requires constant support.
Thus, children’s search for their identity (“who am I?”, “who do I look like?”, “where do I come from?”, “what are my origins?”) cannot be reduced to a matter of open and sincere communication, because it has a much deeper meaning. Knowing the truth per se does not resolve the search for meaning.
What about the children of donation, then? They definitely share numerous similarities with adopted children, for example the fact that they have limited or no access to their birth parent(s), their past and therefore their origins, but also specific elements of complexity, especially in the cases of children of homosexual parents. Consider, in fact, how the position of the adoptive couple and that of the couple who uses heterologous MPA are very different: in the first case, adoptive parents help the child to elaborate a traumatic origin for which he or she is not responsible, in the second case the parents willingly choose to give birth to a child with a “wounded” origin (because partly unknown), a choice they will be held responsible for.
Therefore, some fundamental questions arise: can we reduce the search for the meaning of one’s origins to the search for the donor’s identity? Even when he or she has a name or a face, who does the person who finds him or her actually meet? A father or a mother or a person who provided their sperm or their egg? Can we avoid talking about the origins? Can we reduce the question of filiation to the affective quality of the parent-child relationship, without considering the relevance of the transmission of the genetic and symbolic heritage that passes between generations? And can we consider the psychological risks of choosing to give birth to a new human being at the cost of silencing his or her genealogical and cultural history?
Again, the need to reflect on what it means to generate and to be generated is even more urgent. The answer to this question allows us to make an innovative and thoughtful contribution even to issues that, without such a broader framework, risk being poorly posed, such as, for example, the much-debated question of the well-being of children of same-sex couples.[14] Does generating coincide with nurturing or educating? Is it only a matter of giving affection, norms, containment, support, fostering good psychosocial adjustment (i.e., is it enough to respond to the child’s caregiving-educational needs according to the caregiving-educational dimension)? If the answer is positive, the diatribe falls: in fact, why shouldn’t homosexual couples be able to provide all this, and perhaps quite successfully, given their high investment? The problem appears to be more complex, if we give to the process of generation a different importance and a specificity that goes beyond all this. Generating does not mean giving birth to a child, an infant, but to a son or daughter, what we can call a “generated” being. The child cannot acquire a complete identity unless he or she is included in a generational and social relationship, that takes him or her back to those who gave him/her birth and to the histories of the maternal and paternal family branches. From this point of view, being a son/daughter can be considered a “right”, certainly not being a parent. If anything, parenthood is configured as an ethical duty (rather than a right), calling parents to respect and recognize the right of their own children to be sons and daughters. Generating, therefore, brings to the forefront the theme of the origins, that necessarily involves the couple, but goes beyond it and its desire.
Silencing this aspect means reducing the process of humanization to the educational ability of the couple, configured in narcissistic terms, and overshadowing its inherent and “original” symbolic anchorage.
6. Reproduced child or generated child?
The issues we have just addressed, and in particular the theme of biotechnologies applied to reproduction, open up an issue I’d like to raise in concluding my talk.
Is the child a product, the outcome of a reproductive process, or is he/she a new human generation, the outcome of a generative process?
The question is, first of all, anthropological and urges us to reflect on our understanding of the human being, understood as an object or as a person. An object is produced, a person is generated.
The production-reproduction pair is typical of the world of objects or animals and evokes the idea of a product, a photocopy we could say, or of mass production. The purpose of reproduction in the animal world is in fact the continuity of the species and its survival. The rigid rhythms of mating that we observe in mammals, with their rituals, the fights among males to ensure the continuation of their genetic heritage and the variety of protective behaviours towards the young are all aimed at this supreme and unique purpose. The “little one” of the animal world is subordinate to the purpose of the species and loses its singularity, it is one of a “series”, anonymous or impersonal.
Moreover, the attachment bond, even with the female who gave birth to it, continues for a limited time, as long as the cub is autonomous and then disappears. Recognition is at term. In any case, reproduction has its insurmountable perimeter within the circle constituted by the male, the female and their cub, and does not refer to other protagonists. As the first family therapists already observed, the animal world (even in those species providing forms of social life and protection of the herd) has no knowledge of its ancestors. This fact is fundamental, even if rarely highlighted, even by evolutionary psychology.
And what about human generation? Human generation itself is underpinned by the “biblical” mandate to continue the human species, but that mandate has peculiar characteristics. The mating between male and female is not under the banner of a rigid law that dominates and obligates, but relies on a sexuality that cannot be confined to fixed periods and is – to some extent – governable. The generation process has some degrees of freedom, that can be used for good or evil. The human child born from the encounter between a male and a female does more than simply continue the human species, it renovates it. He or she is in fact unique and not replaceable. No son/daughter is replaceable with another. Hanna Arendt[15] (1958) wrote memorable pages on the “novelty” represented by a birth.
The human child is a generated one, bound not temporarily but forever, to its generators who recognize him/her and are recognized by him/her. Recognition is an essential process for the human species. Naming is the act that seals recognition, and studying how “naming” takes place allows us, on the one hand, to note its universality and, on the other, to admire the different ways in which the generational bond is signified across different cultures and societies. Thus, there were times in which it was customary to give a son or daughter the name of an ancestor, especially if the ancestor had passed away, or the name of a saint, and other times, like today, when it is more frequent to give a name that parents simply like. Not to mention certain African cultures in which the attribution of a name implies a “negotiation” with the ancestors that requires quite a long time.[16] We can say that, for the human son/daughter, recognition from the very beginning relies on a network of pre-existing meanings that come to him/her along with genetic heritage. Giving a name is a way in which you give a destiny, it seals the uniqueness of a person: you are you with all of your essence and cannot be replaced.
But here is an essential point: recognition goes beyond the relationship between who generates and who is generated, because the human generators know in turn that they are generated. They are referred to their ancestors and progenitors, even if, as it happens today, they disregard them or at least illusorily think that they do not need them.
Human generation not only pushes forward, but also backward: it refers to a genealogy. After all, the same etymological root, “gen-”, associates the terms generating, gender, generation, genealogy. The theme of the origins and the reference to a “generational chain”, as Freud mentioned, is fundamental. The biological and symbolic-cultural dimensions are intimately connected and inseparable in human life at its origin and in its development.
Therefore, generating means giving life to a unique human being, the result of the bond between generators (with their gender difference, essential for procreation), which in turn are generated and refer to the dual, paternal and maternal genealogy. If you know where you come from, if you are “generated”, you can be a “generator”, that is, someone who in turn will put in place this complex process of generation.
Generativity, not reproduction, is therefore the fundamental human code, the fulfilment and deepest realization of the person.
Moreover, being generated and generating are gifts both for the person and for the society. Biological and intergenerational generativity are in fact at the basis of social generativity.
Erikson[17] (1982) emphasized how, from a psychological point of view, “generativity” represents a fundamental goal of development, the tendency that marks adulthood. This tendency indicates the ability to leave behind the narcissistic concern for oneself in order to take care of new generations, not necessarily in terms of biological procreativity.
Overcoming an individualistic perspective is the condition that makes it possible to move from a conception of generativity that is entirely confined within the family to a conception of authentic social generativity. St. Aubin, McAdams, and Kim[18] (2003) describe social generativity as a commitment to go beyond oneself in order to promote future generations. Taking care of young people contributes to the strengthening and continuity of generations because it means to feel responsible not only for the growth and well-being of one’s own children, but also of the youth more generally. As Eugenia Scabini[19] states, it is a matter of “raising the children of others as if they were one’s own children”. The failure of generativity is stagnation, which threatens the future not only of the family, but of society as a whole.
The person is therefore always generated and his/her growth is a generative and re-generative process.
But, as Vittorio Cigoli states, “generating puts the person at risk, it exposes him/her”:[20] in fact, human beings not only reproduce themselves, but generate minds by crossing genders and generations and building history and culture. And in this crossing, the risk, the exposure to pain, loss and mourning that the generative leap entails, has its own weight. It is a rule of the generative bond: in order for a generation to grow, you have to make room for another generation, you have to “die” to yourself.
Even within the dynamics of the couple, the child is a third party, he/she is a hope but also someone who “breaks” somehow the unity of the couple, who must make room for another. Generating puts the relationship at risk. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum[21] (2001) states that generating “exposes the person” and that it is, above all, by generating that the “Fragility of Goodness” is measured. It is no coincidence that psychosocial research on the transition to parenthood shows declines in “satisfaction” of the couple, crises and openness to unpredictable risks. The concept of generativity is therefore associated with that of limit.
On the other hand, several scholars after Erikson have highlighted the relationship between generativity and the awareness of mortality. It is the awareness of the end and the acceptance of one’s own mortal condition that pushes the person to be generative. The paradox is – as Eugenia Scabini states – that only the acceptance of death makes love for life mature. It is therefore dramatic when a society is no longer generative, because paradoxically it is telling us that it is a society that is unable to face the most important and inescapable challenge for the human being. The omnipotent temptation of an individual without limits and closed in on himself, with only reproductive goals and no longer generative ones (so present in our cultural context), perhaps speaks to us of this unattainable fear, which is fundamentally a lack of hope.
The real cultural challenge of today, therefore, lies in recovering and relaunching the meaning, the goal of human life, its most intrinsic function, namely, generativity.
Generating bonds is therefore giving life, looking after, but also letting go and therefore always involves a share of pain, just as it happens in childbirth. Generativity is therefore deeply connected to the limit and to the symbolic separation that the human being always faces in his/her growth.
Relaunching the theme of life as a gift and of generativity as the origin and intrinsic goal of existence is therefore a concrete way to approach the mystery of humanity by admitting our limitation, but also to recognize in this limit a breath of hope and a possibility of full completion of the human experience.
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