Russia proposes ban on child-free lifestyle

Russia’s has taken aim this week at an “ideology” that the Kremlin and its allies say threatens the country’s foundations: People not wanting to have children.

Russia’s fight against the West and its values has taken aim this week at an “ideology” that the Kremlin and its allies say threatens the country’s very foundations: people not wanting to have children.

Lawmakers have proposed a ban on “propaganda of conscious refusal to bear children,” Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, said in a post on Telegram on Tuesday.

It is the latest effort by authorities to combat the demographic strain of falling birth rates, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which the Kremlin says could threaten the country’s long-term outlook. In July, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called Russia’s declining birth rate “catastrophic for the future of the nation.”

The issues at the heart of it are not limited to Russia — indeed they have emerged as flashpoints in the U.S. presidential election — but the move this week is just the latest step in a Kremlin campaign to promote what it casts as “traditional values” as it reshapes Russian society around Putin’s war and embraces an existential clash with the United States and allies.

The bill would tackle what Volodin said was the promotion of the “ideology of childlessness” and the “childfree movement” on the internet, in the media, in movies and even in advertisements, citing what he said where frequent online displays of “disrespect for motherhood and fatherhood, aggression toward pregnant women and children, and members of large families.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-proposes-ban-child-free-lifestyle-rcna172616

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