Russia’s lower house of parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to ban what authorities described as harmful propaganda for a childless lifestyle, in the hope of boosting the faltering birth rate.
Official data issued in September put the birth rate at its lowest level in a quarter of a century, while death rates rose as Moscow’s war in Ukraine raged. The Kremlin described these numbers as “disastrous for the future of the nation.”
President Vladimir Putin, who described Russia as a bastion of “traditional values” locked in an existential struggle with a declining West, encouraged women to have at least three children, saying that would help secure Russians’ future. There are already financial and other incentives.
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 deemed to promote “unconventional lifestyles” as well as on narratives opposing the conflict in Ukraine.
Authors of “child-free propaganda” will be subject to fines of up to 400,000 rubles ($4,100) for individuals, twice that amount for officials, and up to 5 million rubles ($51,000) for legal entities.
About 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 since 1999. The number of deaths jumped by 49,000. However, immigration jumped by 20%.
Estimates in the CIA’s World Factbook place Russia among the 40 countries with the lowest birth rate in 2023 at about 9.22 per 1,000 people, slightly ahead of Germany’s 9.02 but far behind China’s 9.7 and the United States’ 12.21.
“We are talking about protecting citizens, especially the younger generation, from information published in the media space that has a negative impact on the formation of people’s personality,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the House of Representatives and a major ally of Putin.
“Everything we can must be done to ensure that new generations of our citizens grow up on the basis of traditional family values.”
“Better living standards to increase the birth rate”
But some women were skeptical.
Alina Rezanova, 33, who lives in Yaroslavl, 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow, was previously determined not to have children, but now has an eight-month-old son.
“People want children, but there is no money,” she said. “This is why people don’t have children. It’s not because someone somewhere wrote something.”
In Moscow, Yana, a 40-year-old woman, said she did not want children and declined to give her last name because of the sensitivity of the topic. She also felt that ensuring decent standards of living, especially outside major cities, could help reverse the trend. Low birth rate.
“People have children when they are confident about tomorrow,” she said. “But when mortgage rates are 20% a year, I don’t think this is the time to have an unlimited number of children.”
“The child-free community is a place where people discuss on the same page why they don’t want children. Do they have the right to discuss it? They have the right.
“It’s unlikely that many young people will read it and say, ‘I don’t want kids either.’”