Openly defending one’s decision not to have children will be prosecuted in Russia. The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, is preparing a bill under which authorities will impose fines of up to €50,000 ($55,580) for supporting “the refusal to have children.” The measure affects all areas of life — from casual conversation to films and books — and is a serious threat to the Russian feminist movement.
The crackdown on what the Kremlin calls the “childfree” movement will result in fines of up to 400,000 rubles for individuals (around $4,300), 800,000 rubles for civil servants ($8,600), and up to five million rubles ($55,580) for companies or other legal entities. Foreigners will also be deported.
There are thousands of reasons why a person may decide not to have children, but the Cabinet of ministers has asked the State Duma to make only three exceptions to the law: religious reasons, medical reasons or in the case of rape. It also alleges that there is a mass-organized childfree movement, even though the websites on this subject are little more than a curiosity; Russian newspapers cite the existence of groups on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, which barely have 5,000 members.
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I disagree with policies that constrain speech, would not want to do this in the US, and I’m skeptical that this is going to work, but I will give them this: Russia does have a serious demographic problem, and they’re at least trying to solve it.
https://www.populationpyramid.net/russian-federation/2023/
There are a long list of points on which Russia has constrained speech that have fuck-all to deal with real national concerns and are just about benefiting the current government in power at the expense of the country. But here, they’re actually trying to address a real and serious national problem.
And Russia volunteering to be a guinea pig will at least provide data that benefits everyone else. If it works, then we learn something, and if it doesn’t work, then we learn something. My guess is that it’ll be the latter, but this is the empirical way to determine that.
We don’t have a policy answer yet to maintaining a sustainable fertility rate either, so it’s not as if we have a tested alternative available.
I have a better idea. Instead of stealing bodily autonomy from women, Russia could stop fighting a war that has claimed the lives of at least half a million of their citizens. They could stop enacting policies that result in young people fleeing their country. They could embrace immigration and work to improve the happiness and social mobility of their populace.
What Russia is doing here is not a good-faith effort to fix their population issues.
In addition to what others have said, other countries HAVE tried things, and they do work. Things like the child tax credit and direct subsidies bump things in the right direction. Imagine if they required pay to keep up with inflation and actually required companies provide adequate maternity and paternity leave…
It also helps not being a hellhole of dictatorship. I know so many younger people with russian origins here in Germany, who (or whose parents) might have stayed in Russia if it wasn’t a bloody dictatorship. More babies are not helping if everybody who can is fleeing the country at the first opportunity
Very good point! I just wanted to point out the stupidity of even remotely implying other countries don’t try to tackle this issue in MUCH better ways.
I’d even argue that shutting down speech is specifically not “trying to solve” it. At all. It’s literally deciding to not talk about it. Few problems get better when they cannot even be freely discussed…
Forced births by not allowing abortion or speech about not having children is not solving the problem.
Doing something to promote wanting to have children, like social supports, would be trying to solve the problem.
I’m not sure “shut up and fuck… or else” counts as actual policy.