Loading ...Russia to Refer Childless Women for Psychiatric Evaluations
Russia is now advising psychological counseling for women who do not intend to have children, which is precisely the type of response governments default to when they refuse to confront economic reality. They search for cultural or emotional explanations when the issue is economical.
When confidence in the future declines, long-term investments decline. Children are the most fundamental long-term investment in any society. The decline in birth rates is therefore not a social anomaly but a direct reflection of economic confidence. Russia proposing psychological counseling illustrates how far removed policy responses have become from reality. This is not a question of convincing people to want children. It is a question of creating an economic environment where having children is viable.
Hey Columbia, I hope you are reading this. Scratch Russia as a place to visit. Any place that values women only for their capacity to breed is not a place I’ll spend my tourist dollars.
On a more sombre note, there are plenty of families in Russia where alcoholism is rampant, poverty is unrelenting, and health care is meagre at best. Why would a woman in this situation want to bring children into the world?