Gap Between Number of Children Russians Would Like and the Number They Expect to be Able to Have Growing, VTsIOM Poll Finds

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 13 – Since 2005, the number of children Russians would like to have has grown from 2.4 to 3.2 but the gap between those figures and the number of children Russians expect to have has grown from -0.5 to -0.8, according to a new VTsIOM survey on families in the Russian Federation.

    If the first figure is one that the Putin regime is certain to celebrate because it suggests the Kremlin’s efforts to promote larger families as a generally accepted norm, the second is not because it shows that while Russians want more children, they don’t expect that conditions make that possible (wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/semja-i-brak-v-rossii-xxi-veka).

    Unless the Russian economy improves and confidence among Russians in the future improves along with it, this means that there will be a rising tide of frustration among Russians and that a major reason for that is the combination of the pro-natalist propaganda of the regime and the conditions that regime has created that limit Russians ability to achieve those goals.

    Among other key findings of this survey are the following:

•    Young people are far more likely to live together or enter into marriage without any plans to have children.

•    Across almost all age groups except the oldest, there is a growing disconnect between marriage and the idea that it involves having children.

•    Russian men have both higher estimates of how many children they’ll have and of how many they would like than do Russian women.

•    Nearly half of all Russians believe that women who give birth should stay at home until children reach the age of three.

•    Over the last two decades, Russians have become three times as likely to say that they will get married “in correspondence with religious and national traditions,” that is, “because it is what is done.”