Antonio Polito
Contro i papà

In the surge of opinions and opinionists permeated with the usual provincial and victimistic tone that characterizes our country, it is a true pleasure to discover an Antonio Polito who for once frees himself from the role of a distinguished political-economic observer to take on that of a father in his new pamphlet “Contro i papà”. Thanks to the virile and sweet tone together, we rediscover the pleasure of a clear and direct approach to the issue of the youth crisis, and we finally take a breath from the distressing psychological and sociological theories proposed by publishing and television debates, where commonplaces or incomprehensible expert arguments, which have only the intent of further confusing us, dominate. The matter is certainly not simple, nor does Polito claim to offer the solution on a silver platter, so much so that on the back cover the “How to save ourselves from the consequences” is followed by a nice question mark. What is instead very clear is the path that has led us to the current situation, and understanding the causes is already a reassuring step forward.

The “trade unionist” that resides in every father operates on the assumption that the young, and therefore his children, are always right, the comfortable choice of peaceful coexistence, which when added to the “I protect my children and you protect yours” becomes the tacit agreement on which Italy stands. It is pointless to deny that alongside the slackers, there are us, the baBBoccioni children of the baby boom, who along with education and moral sense have insisted on transmitting to the children the right to easy happiness, through well-being, contraception, and the thought of the twentieth century with its neuroses of which we are victims, Freud, Marx, Darwinism, the Sixties, thus raising the unhappy. Parents practice overparenting, an excess of attention, a principle perfectly aligned with understanding, trying to get obedience out of love and not out of fear of punishment, where everything is forgiven to the children at the expense of “corrections”. An excellent accomplice of the lenient parent is the teacher, as allergic as the students to any form of evaluation, whether out of laziness or to compensate for the frustration of a disgraceful salary with a sort of self-affirmation by showcasing a well-prepared class. But if alongside the responsibility of the fathers, a series of sociological motivations are listed, then why “against the fathers”? For that matter, even the Constitution had its Fathers, who on one hand codified ethical principles into commendable legal norms, yet on the other acted like all ordinary fathers by transferring their Italian nature into daily life, applying a personal broader interpretation to the law, such as when “the paternalistic mantra shields behind a convenient reading of the Constitution and transforms the right to work into the right to a job”. From Father to father, in short.

The dignity of work and professional affirmation, the core of the problem for the youth, is based on two fundamental pillars: school and the opportunities offered by the job market, two interdependent issues. Here Polito touches the most burning issue of his lucid analysis, brilliantly intertwining the lifelong learning of the Montessori method with the concentratio interrupta (sublime macaronic Latin) by TV, the peer pressure of peers, the issue of Neets who neither work nor study dreaming of inheritance, the leveling down of Italian universities, and family protectionism that replaces children in the search for work. We learn the distinction between inequality and social injustice “in a world where influence is everything”, and even worse than the viral kind because it is a hereditary disease, and that the much-criticized teacher-minister Fornero is not wrong in classifying as choosy certain youth refractory to adjusting to the market offer. “Italy is not a Country for the young”, it is a Country of recommendations, starting from those we receive as children from “teddy-bear fathers” to those that procure us the reassuring job as adults, unless we belong to the category of brains in flight, and here Polito, with a perfect economic equation, demonstrates how the migration of “brains” represents a benefit both for the host Country and the homeland, even when the investment in education occurs at the expense of the latter. And he urges parents to cut the umbilical cord to launch their little bears into the world. If optimism is “the weapon to increase our chances of success”, then here come catastrophists and no-Tav to dim what's left of the candle. But no panic, the author, data in hand, shows us how the “state of fear” is only the fruit of media pessimism, while globalization has indeed reduced absolute poverty and for the first time the middle class represents the majority in the world.

Written with the sharp pen of an expert and the tender heart of a father, Polito spares us no hilarious passages and on a very serious topic, he even closes with a sparkling finale between myth, the Father of God, and symbolic liberating patricide. This is not just a book for fathers, it is a book for mothers, for children, and even for those who have no children, because we are all children of someone and above all, we are children of a Country that should finally cast off the old mediocracy to make way for a healthy meritocracy, starting right from the family. Word of a mother. Laura Zambelli Del Rocino