By Alvise Armellini<\/p>\n
ROME, June 5 (Reuters) – Sex education in Italian schools will require parental consent under a reform promoted by \u200cPrime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government, which also excludes it \u200cfrom nurseries and primary schools.<\/p>\n
The bill, sponsored by Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara, won final approval \u200bin the Senate on Thursday, drawing criticism from opposition parties that it could restrict teenagers’ access to important information.<\/p>\n
“Subordinating sex education to parental consent is like asking families’ permission to teach Italian (literature) or history: an institutional \u200cabsurdity that betrays the educational \u2060mandate of public schools,” said Angelo Bonelli, co-leader of the Greens and Left Alliance party.<\/p>\n
Valditara said after the \u2060vote that the reform would protect minors “from the confusion of gender propaganda” and re-establish the constitutional principle that parents are responsible for their children’s education.<\/p>\n
The \u200bterms “gender \u200btheory” or “gender propaganda” are often used \u200bby conservative politicians to discredit \u200cacademic studies or policies that challenge traditional notions of masculinity and femininity, or state that gender identities are not fixed.<\/p>\n
Under the new law, schools must inform families at least seven days in advance of any sex education initiatives, including details on outside experts or organisations involved.<\/p>\n
Pro Vita & \u200cFamiglia, a Catholic group advocating traditional family \u200bvalues, welcomed the measure, saying it would \u200ballow parents to reject initiatives \u200bthey deemed inappropriate.<\/p>\n
“Parents will be able to learn about, \u200cidentify and reject in advance \u200binappropriate projects that promote \u200bgender fluidity, abortion, surrogate motherhood and an ideological vision of sexuality among minors,” a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Sex education in schools is not \u200bcompulsory in Italy, unlike \u200cin most European countries. A 2025 Save the Children survey \u200bfound only 47% of Italian teenagers had received it.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bAlvise Armellini, editing by Andrew Cawthorne)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Alvise Armellini ROME, June 5 (Reuters) – Sex education in Italian schools will require parental consent under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15828,15829,15827,325,12821,5,15822,15820],"class_list":["post-22365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-angelo-bonelli","tag-gender-fluidity","tag-gender-identities","tag-giorgia-meloni","tag-giuseppe-valditara","tag-italy","tag-parental-consent","tag-sex-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}