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.
I’m not saying that lack of women’s opportunity was better: I’m saying it was easier to choose children in a family when one parent could afford it, when one parent could be dedicated to it.
I’m also not saying women’s lack of choice and opportunity was a good thing or that we should wish for it, but you can see how it facilitated a higher birth rate. We never want to go back, but how do we make it easier for people to choose more children, in that context? How can that conflict ever be fixed?
For myself, I loved taking care of kids and believe I would have made a great stay at home Dad. However among other things, my ex could not financially support our family alone and it would have seriously derailed my career, my future ability to support our family. Now that women have the same opportunity, the same choice, the same freedom, they’re also stuck with the same consequences. How can we expect more parents to choose children when you face less ability to support them, for both men and women.
Regardless of societal changes being for the better, we have lasting changes that will keep the birth rate too low
I’m saying you could have afforded it. That you didn’t want to accept that lower quality of life is a valid counter though. (it may have required you to move to the poor side of town which is often dangerous). Your observations about how it affects future career is also spot on. You could have done it though.
I suppose there’s always a way, always a compromise that could have been made.
However our situation was more extreme than most. As a software engineer, I earned enough to support my family reasonably well, even on one income. Our family could afford that my ex be a stay-at-home Mom, which many families could not. One of the benefits was also to allow my ex the opportunity to take the job most fulfilling to her (as the kids went to school), despite it paying well below the average income, well below what she could have earned. Trying to support a family on that would be very poor indeed