Regional health minister says those who are busy with careers can ‘create offspring’ on work breaks

While addressing a crowd at the Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed government policy geared toward helping women achieve the ultimate balance — professional success while being the linchpin “of a large, large family.”

He went on to joke that Russian women can manage it easily, and still remain “beautiful, gentle and charming.”

His comments are the latest in a public push by government officials to try and reverse Russia’s sinking birth rate by appealing to a sense of patriotic duty and promising financial incentives to sway prospective parents.

Russia’s fertility rate — which measures the average number of children born to a woman over a lifetime — stands at approximately 1.4, less than what is considered the rate for population replacement, which is 2.1. Kremlin officials have labelled Russia’s statistic “catastrophic,” and it comes at a time of higher mortality among younger Russian men due to the war in Ukraine.

  • @Blue_Morpho
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    138 hours ago

    If population declines no one needs to do a land grab. There’s enough for everyone.

    • @acosmichippo
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      8 hours ago

      or, the ultra wealthy will take even more of it.

      • @00x0xx
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        36 hours ago

        Indeed. We already have more than enough land for every human, and can probably even provide for double our global population. The problem is that wealthy already owns the majority of land, and limit its access and usage to the average citizen of his nation.

        They are some exceptions of this, India and China are the two I can think of right now. But it also probably one reason they are able to have a very high dense population, people there have more access to land.

    • bluGill
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      17 hours ago

      Everyone wants more. while there are limits to how much more we are not even close. Besides it is governments going to war and those leaders have a lot more ability to control more than normal people.

    • @Valmond
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      18 hours ago

      Tell Russia that lol