Beatrice Spadacini: “Single, mother and happy”

For Beatrice, not obtaining the full adoption of her daughter from Italy – her country – immediately meant many things: first of all, the brake on being able to go home when she wanted. “We could only do it using the American passport, thus entering Italy as a foreigner. At the airport controls, a policeman told me that I should always carry the adoption documents with me in order not to risk problems“. With the pandemic, Beatrice blocked by the lockdown in the United States realized that if she had wanted to return to Italy with her daughter, she could not have done so. “That feeling made me shiver.” So she tried, together with the Milanese lawyers Grazia Cesaro and Anna Omodeo, to change her situation. “Beatrice came to us quite frightened because she is aware of the Italian law which does not currently provide for adoption to single people”, explain the lawyers. “But her case is different, because having lived abroad for more than two years on the date she adopted her daughter in Kenya, Beatrice was able to enjoy a rule of law that simplifies the life of our Italian citizens residing in the abroad and allows the recognition in Italy of the sentence issued in the foreign country “. This happens because there is the awareness that the majority of States authorize international adoption also to single persons. At least 100 out of 160 countries that foresee adoption (including our neighbors: France, Spain, England, Portugal, Switzerland) while there are a strong minority, about ten, that exclude it. It is not the first time that an Italian court has issued a sentence in favor of a single person, but Beatrice’s case sets an important precedent. “The novelty is that adoption was recognized as having a legitimizing effect. While in the past the Juvenile Court of Milan had recognized other adoptions perfected by single people abroad, but giving them attenuated effects that create a kinship bond only with the adoptive parent, Zawadi is also linked by law to parents and brother. of his mother, who are in effect his grandparents, uncles, cousins. For example, you have the right to inherit from them in case of death. ‘

A few weeks ago Zawadi obtained his Italian passport. “It was a fundamental moment because Italy is my country,” continues Beatrice. “I often ask myself why singles are not yet allowed to adopt here. I hope that our little big won battle will open the way to a different, more just, less archaic law, and that it will give the possibility to other children who need a family to find one ». With the same goal, Antonio De Padova42 years old, he founded in his city, Avellino, the Family Revolution group, made up of single people and civilly united couples. «We started with a question. Why couldn’t we be good parents for the Italian state? And again: why by the law would I be an excellent father if I asked to adopt a child with a disability? ». A question that Antonio will ask, as a single person, directly to the court, at the end of February: «When I will apply for adoption. It will be rejected, and from that moment with our lawyers Nadine Sirignano and Miguel Coraggio we will carry out pilot cases. We want to be treated like a heterosexual family ». Chiara, 42, decided to move to Madagascar instead. «For Italy, a single woman cannot be a mother. Neither adoption nor assisted fertilization is granted. For this reason, after several trips abroad and failed attempts, I have chosen to leave my country and start a new life in Madagascar where the adoption of single residents is foreseen “.

A further discriminating factor are the costs, which vary from country to country but always exceed at least ten thousand euros. Reason why, often, even couples who enjoy all rights are discouraged. But why all these obstacles if the supreme interest is always that of the child? In the orphanage where Beatrice met her daughter Zawadi still today there are many boys and girls without a family. “When I saw African women, alone, taking care of them, I told myself that I could have done the same thing too, and who knows how many other women and men in Italy would like to do it.” If on the one hand there are more and more cases like that of Beatrice that push the courts to change their orientation, on the other there are stories of people who would not want to feel forced to leave their country to build a family. “If a right is not guaranteed to everyone, it becomes a privilege for a few “concludes Antonio. This is confirmed by the European Convention on the adoption of minors, signed in Strasbourg and made executive by law no. 357 of May 22, 1974, providing for “the unlimited possibility for an individual to adopt a minor”, as stated in the bill presented by deputy Laura Ravetto in 2016 to amend the existing law. To conclude, a fact: according to estimates collected in 140 countries, at least 2.7 million children live in orphanages.

To subscribe to Vanity Fair, click here

Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:

-The Stories We Are, Loredana: “Let us embrace the child we have adopted”

-Fabulous families really exist