Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said reviving the nation's birth rate is one of Russia's "top priorities."

Russia has moved to classify key demographic statistics following a dramatic collapse in its birth rate, which has plunged to levels not seen since the late 18th or early 19th century, according to a leading Russian demographer.

For decades, Russia has been experiencing a plunging birth rate and population decline, which appears to have worsened amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine—with high casualty rates and men fleeing the country to avoid being conscripted to fight.

Projections estimate that Russia’s population will fall to about 132 million in the next two decades. The United Nations has predicted that in a worst-case scenario, by the start of the next century, Russia’s population could almost halve to 83 million.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    7·
    12 hours ago

    I have thought long and hard about having a kid. The only positives are some happy moments, my parents getting a grandbaby, and having someone to help make sure I don’t get taken advantage of when I’m old (I believe it is my financial responsibility to plan for myself but I know my brain may decline). Then I think of the negatives. The money, the loss of sleep, the loss of autonomy, the loss of time, it’s just all so so much. My life would get substantially worse.

    Then I think about adopting someone older than a baby, and it’s an interesting idea, I don’t feel a need to spread my genes, but it’s the same thing. Then I think maybe adopt a teenager, it’s not as long of a commitment. But by this point it’s such a nasty equation of tradeoffs and I never want a child to be thought of that way. Plus, I really don’t think I have the heart or patience for adopting an older child.

    So the only real thing I feel like I’m missing is having someone to make sure I’m not a victim of elder abuse. I’ll just try to keep getting you get friends and keep them close. I’m 33. My youngest close-ish friend is about 22. If I keep making young people my friends then hopefully if I’m in the nightmare scenario of mental decline and my spouse has passed that one of them can check up on me when we’re both old. That seems less shitty than adopting a child for that reason.

    • conditional_soup@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      9 hours ago

      I’m a parent. I’m not going to try and sell you on having a kid; don’t do it unless you know you want to. What I’m about to say isn’t trying to sell you on parenthood or making apologetics, but just sharing my own personal experience having thought of almost all the same things you’ve thought and then crossed the bridge anyway. I figure that parenting really isn’t about what you get out of it, and you do get stuff out of it- the love, the experience, the ups and downs, someone to depend on and who depends on you. In a lot of ways it’s a microcosm of the human social experience in that you much more personally experience the things that make up existing with others in a society. You don’t necessarily need kids the same way you don’t necessarily need a significant other or a circle of friends, it’s just that humans are, by our nature, social creatures, and we’re almost always better off with richer social connections in our life than not. Yeah, you definitely do lose stuff; take autonomy, it’s kind of similar to how you lose a certain degree of autonomy when you get into a serious long term relationship, only you really shouldn’t break up with your kids if they piss you off. If that tradeoff isn’t for you, that’s cool!

      Everybody’s different, but my kids have motivated me to get involved in politics (beyond just voting) at the local level and try to start planting trees whose shade I may never get to enjoy. It made me think hard about the kind of world that we’re leaving to them, and about what responsibility I have as a parent to do what I can to make that world a better place. I don’t expect anything from them; if they move away to live their life, that’s fine, I trust them to use their best judgment and live their life how they see fit, and just knowing that they’re depending on us to do everything we can for them has really motivated me to think differently about things in ways that I believe are generally positive. In case you’re curious about it, you could always try hosting an exchange student. It’s about the lowest commitment way to be a parent to someone, especially since they’re typically older teenagers. If you hate their guts, you can always ask the host organization that they be placed elsewhere. I’ve hosted I think eight exchange kids, and in hindsight, I don’t regret a single instance, even for the kids we didn’t get along with and had to place elsewhere.