Don't be surprised if the streets are empty and curtains drawn in this central Russian region Wednesday as residents take up an offer by the regional governor to help stem Russia's demographic crisis.
Ulyanovsk Gov. Sergei Morozov has decreed Sept. 12 a Day of Conception and is giving couples time off from work to procreate. Couples who give birth nine months later on Russia's national day -- June 12 -- will receive money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.
It's the third year that the Volga River region, about 550 miles east of Moscow, has held the contest. Since then, the number of competitors -- and the number of babies born -- has been on the rise.
"If there's a good, healthy atmosphere at home within the family, if the husband and wife both love each other and their child, they will be in good spirits and that will extend to the workplace. So there will be a healthy atmosphere throughout the country," he told AP Television News. "The leadership (of the country) is interested in the family."
Russia's population has dropped since the 1991 Soviet collapse, fed by declining birth rates, a low life expectancy, a spike in emigration, a frayed health care system and other factors. The country -- the world's largest -- now has just 141.4 million citizens, making it one of the most sparsely settled nations. And experts estimate the population could fall below 100 million by 2050.
Just 311 women signed up to take part in the first competition, in 2005, and qualify for a half-day off from work. The next June, 46 more babies were born in Ulyanovsk's 25 hospitals compared to the previous June, including 28 born on June 12, officials said.
More than 500 women signed up for the contest in 2006 -- resulting nine months later in 78 babies, or more than triple the region's daily average. So far this year, the region's birth rate is up 4.5 percent compared to the same period last year.
"I don't think people get pregnant just to get a prize on the 12th (of June) but if the dates coincide and they give you a ... car there's nothing wrong with that," said Yuri, a 28-year-old father-to-be who declined to give his last name.
Last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the country's most acute problem and announced a broad effort to boost the birthrate, including cash subsidies for couples giving birth to more than one child. Women who give birth to their second or third child receive $10,000 vouchers to pay for education or home repairs.
In Ulyanovsk, everyone who has a baby in a local hospital on June 12 gets some kind of prize. The winners of the grand prize -- a locally made SUV called a UAZ-Patriot -- are couples judged by a committee on criteria such as "respectability" and "commendable parenting."
Perhaps not surprisingly, the effort has drawn snickers. According to one joke circulating on the Internet, regional university teachers -- after being ordered to draw up special activities for Wednesday -- proposed covering the floors of school gymnasiums with mattresses and dimming the lights.
Andrei Kartuzov, who won the last "make a baby" grand prize along with his wife, Irina, said they had been planning to have another child anyway.
The campaign "is a good help for people, especially for those living in villages," he said. "If they hold such actions every year, then maybe we will have (more children) growing up and Russia will be bigger." -
Source Russia Gives Its Workers Day Off to Have Sex, Get Pregnant
This post, written by Jill Filipovic, originally appeared on Feministe
This is especially interesting on the heels of this: Russia is giving people a day off of work to have sex. And if you give birth exactly nine months later, you get a prize, which might be anything from money to a refrigerator to a car. It's being called National Conception Day -- which isn't quite as catchy as my term for it, which is National Russians **** Like Cold, Pale Rabbits In Furry Hats Day.
It's being held in the Volga River region, which I also initially read as "Volva River region."
But the humor of people doin' it in an effort to win a refrigerator aside, this is one aspect of what I was alluding to in my previous post -- the politics of population control are fraught with racism, and white people world-wide are terrified that brown people are "out-breeding" them. Russia is a good example:
Last year, President Vladimir Putin called the demographic crisis the country's most acute problem and announced a broad effort to boost the birthrate, including cash subsidies for couples giving birth to more than one child. Women who give birth to their second or third child receive $10,000 vouchers to pay for education or home repairs.
When our world is already over-populated and population growing, why in God's name would a declining population be a "country's mos acute problem"? Only if the wrong kinds of people are the ones doing the populating.
And then there's this:
Russia wants to reverse a trend in which the population is shrinking by about 700,000 people a year as births fail to outpace a death rate fueled by AIDS, alcoholism and suicide.
I'd say you have some problems that are more pressing than your birth rate.
Amanda has some interesting thoughts on the issue, and I think at the end of the day, most of us agree: It would be good to reduce the population. It would be good to make having no children, or only one child, a socially acceptable choice. The problem, though, comes with balancing idealism and reality. Amanda is clear that her post represents an ideal, and that there are lots of social ills standing in the way. The fact is, we have a really, really ugly, racist history when it comes to population control. The ideas that underlie that history are still alive and scoring votes -- see Reagan's "welfare queen" for a blatant example. It's middle and upper-class white women who are encouraged to have more kids in order to stem the tide of brown babies coming from immigrants, Muslims, poor people, and other "unfit" "breeders." And the U.S. certainly doesn't have a monopoly on natalism; see how negative birthrates have been viewed from Italy to Japan.
At the heart of all of these conversations is a need to shame women. Shame them if they don't produce enough of the right kind of children for their country. If they're the wrong kind of women, shame them for having the nerve to reproduce in the first place. Shame them for using birth control or having abortions. Shame them for not. Shame them for being a drain on our financial resources. Shame them for harming the environment. Shame them for being selfish and anti-child. It's not always intentional, but it's what's happening.
So while I can get behind conversations about how our childbearing choices affect the environment, I can't get behind social policy that encourages women to do one thing or another. And while I can get behind social policy that helps women (including women with children), I can't get behind policy that promotes childbearing in order to score a new fridge.
Although I would certainly a support a National Doin' It Day. -
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