Chairperson of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin said parliamentarians had begun to examine legislation to outlaw “a conscious refusal to have children”.
The Russian parliament is working on a law that would ban what the authorities cast as the harmful promotion of a child-free way of life with heavy fines for “childlessness propaganda”, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairperson of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, said parliamentarians had begun to examine legislation to outlaw what he described as propaganda on the internet, in films, in advertising and in the media that encourages “a conscious refusal to have children”.
Putin, who has cast Russia as a bastion of “traditional values” locked in an existential struggle with a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children, saying that will help secure the future of Russians.
The issue has taken on greater urgency for the authorities after official data released this month showed that Russia’s birth rate had slid to its lowest in a quarter of a century while mortality rates are up, with no end in sight to Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Volodin accused what authorities have described as the “child-free movement” of devaluing the institution of family with an ideology which state officials fret is putting some women off having children.
“Groups and communities on social networks often show disrespect for motherhood and fatherhood,” said Volodin.
Cape Times
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