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By Anna Louie Sussman
Ms. Sussman writes about gender, economics and reproduction. She is working on a book about family building in an age of uncertainty.
For the past few years, I’ve kept a running list of harebrained schemes various governments and officials have proposed to raise the birthrate in their aging countries. Some of the most creative ones come from Russia.
The mayor of a city in southwest Russia encouraged men to “sneak up on their women so that 10,000 children will be born in exactly nine months.” Some regions are giving lump-sum bonuses to women who become mothers while they’re still in school, and a Russian version of MTV’s “16 and Pregnant,” which originally discouraged teen pregnancy, has been rebranded as “Mom at 16,” in order to promote it. One politician encouraged women to wear miniskirts to increase births, while an official in the country’s Education Ministry advocated “school discos” to foster “romance for children.” A regional health minister has told Russians to have sex during work breaks.
