MOSCOW (Reuters) – The lower house of Russia’s parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday (13) to ban what authorities called harmful propaganda for a childless lifestyle in the hope of boosting a faltering birth rate.
Official data released in September put the birth rate at its lowest level in a quarter of a century, while death rates rise as Moscow’s war in Ukraine continues. The Kremlin called the numbers “catastrophic for the future of the nation.”
President Vladimir Putin, who has presented Russia as a bastion of “traditional values” in an existential struggle against a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children, saying this will help secure Russians’ futures. Financial and other incentives already exist.
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The law, which is expected to be quickly approved by the upper house of Parliament and Putin, joins other restrictions on freedom of expression, including a ban on content considered to promote “non-traditional lifestyles”, such as relationships between people of the same sex or gender fluidity, as well as dissenting accounts of the conflict in Ukraine.
Authors of “child-free propaganda” will be subject to fines of up to 400,000 rubles (equivalent to $4,100) for individuals, double that for public officials, and up to 5 million rubles ($51,000) for legal entities.
Around 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024, which is 16,000 fewer than in the first half of 2023 and the lowest number since 1999. The number of deaths increased by 49,000. However, immigration rose 20%.
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Estimates from the CIA’s World Factbook placed Russia among the 40 countries with the lowest birth rate in 2023, at around 9.22 per 1,000 inhabitants, slightly ahead of Germany at 9.02, but well behind China , with 9.7, and the United States, with 12.21.
“We are talking about protecting citizens, especially the younger generation, from information disseminated in the media space that has a negative impact on the formation of people’s personalities,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house and a senior Putin ally.
“Everything must be done to ensure that new generations of our citizens grow up centered on traditional family values.”
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WOMEN DEFEND A BETTER STANDARD OF LIVING
But some women were skeptical.
Alina Rzhanova, 33, who lives in Yaroslavl, 250 km northeast of Moscow, was once determined not to have children, but now has an eight-month-old baby.
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“People want to have children, but there is no money,” he said. “This is why people aren’t having kids. It’s not because someone somewhere wrote something.”
In Moscow, Yana, a 40-year-old woman who said she did not want to have children and declined to give her last name due to the sensitivity of the issue, said she also thought that ensuring decent living standards, particularly outside big cities, could help reverse the decline in the birth rate.
“People have children when they are confident about the future. But when mortgage rates reach 20% a year, I don’t think it’s a good time to have unlimited children,” he said.
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“A childless community is one where people on the same wavelength discuss why they don’t want to have children. Do they have the right to discuss this? He has”.
“It’s unlikely that many young people will read it and say ‘I don’t want to have kids either’.”
(Reuters Report)
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