Where Did "Traditional Values" Come From?
How the Kremlin moved from supporting mothers to restricting abortions: the roots of aggressive pronatalism, and the surprising role of the American Neoconservative movement.
Editor’s Note:
Hello, Aron here—DOXA’s weekly newsletter editor—bringing you all things Russian, in English.
Except for this week’s article, which explores how key themes of Vladimir Putin’s governance align with broader international trends.
In this piece—originally published in our Russian-language outlet—contributor Ivan Krasin explores how Putin’s Russia moved from implementing the fiscally progressive “maternity capital” program, which provided financial support to mothers and extended maternity leave, to outlawing so-called “childfree propaganda.” But as Krasin argues, Russia’s embrace of social conservatism didn’t happen in isolation—it was shaped by a fusion of American neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative ideology, both of which have promoted pronatalism as a response to economic crises.
Vladimir Putin’s push to define Russia’s distinct path in opposition to the United States and the West is often traced back to his landmark speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. Nearly two decades later, at that same conference in 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance would make global headlines by declaring that Europe’s greatest threat was “not Russia” but its “retreat from its own values.” Just months earlier, as Russia passed its “childfree propaganda” law, Vance dismissed single women as “childless cat ladies” in an interview.
Make of that what you will, and now, on to the piece!
On February 8, 2024, DOXA was added to Russia’s list of “undesirable organizations.”If you are in Russia or plan to travel there, you are prohibited from sharing our materials on social media, citing them, or reposting excerpts.
By Ivan Krasin
Translated by Aron Ouzilevski
The Russian government marked 2024 as the “Year of the Family.” In his annual televised speech ringing in the new year, President Vladimir Putin referred to his country as a “vast family, a family of families.” “Any goal can be achieved when we are together—in a large family with many children, where help and support are always available,” he continued.
In the speech, the president recalled the admonitions of his father, exalted the all-consuming love of a mother, and stressed how family values are the moral guidelines to consolidate society.
By the start of the “Year of the Family,” Russia had banned surrogacy for foreign nationals and outlawed the “extremist LGBT movement.” In several regions, private clinics voluntarily ceased offering abortion services. The year ended with a triumphant ban on the "propaganda of childfree"—any material that allegedly promotes the conscious decision not to have children.
But why does the single president of a country where eight out of ten marriages annually end in divorce champion the importance of family? How is the public rhetoric of family values connected to the reproduction of patriarchy, the curtailing of women’s reproductive rights, the suppression of alternative lifestyles, and the reduction of the state’s social obligations? And why are leaders worldwide—from Turkey to the United States—so aggressively promoting the idea of a family unit?
In 2007, Russia introduced its first major initiative to support families: the maternity capital. It came at a time when energy prices were soaring, and Vladimir Putin had turned his attention to the country's declining birth rate. His solution? A policy aimed at reversing the trend, though it was presented as a secondary priority—just after an "effective migration policy."
In 2006, Vladimir Putin introduced "maternity capital," a financial incentive for women to have more children, marking an early attempt to address Russia’s demographic crisis. The program provided families with a second or third child a lump sum of 250,000 rubles (about $9,500), with mothers controlling how the money was spent. At the time, Putin framed the policy as a way to protect women from economic dependence.
Russia’s shift toward conservative social policies accelerated in the 2010s. In 2013, the State Duma passed laws banning "gay propaganda" and criminalizing offenses against religious believers. By 2014, restrictions extended to prohibiting profanity in media and the arts. The Kremlin’s rhetoric increasingly positioned “traditional values” as a counterweight to Western "moral decay," with state propaganda mocking Europe as "Gayropa."
Following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin doubled down. In 2022, Putin signed a decree to "preserve and strengthen traditional Russian values," warning of ideological threats to demographic growth. By 2023, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko called reducing abortions a “key task,” leading to quiet restrictions on access to abortion and contraception. That December, parliamentary speaker Valentina Matviyenko denied rumors of a nationwide abortion ban but added, “We will certainly ensure abortions are performed in cases of violence or medical necessity.”
Abortion has long been a key part of reproductive healthcare in Russia, with the country maintaining one of the most liberal abortion policies during the Soviet era. Although abortion rates were high for many years, they have steadily declined since the early 2000s, driven by improved access to contraception and shifting social attitudes. Despite this natural reduction, the Russian government’s push to restrict abortion access, largely fueled by demographic concerns, risks undermining progress and ignoring the broader public health landscape.
The crackdown expanded further in 2023 when Russia’s Supreme Court labeled the so-called "international LGBT movement" extremist, claiming it was a U.S.-led initiative to suppress birth rates. Months later, Putin signed a law banning gender transitions. By late 2024, the State Duma outlawed “childfree propaganda,” criminalizing the framing of a childless life as an attractive choice.
The State Duma has banned the “childfree propaganda,” but that’s not all.
In tandem with the legal ban on “childfree propaganda,” some Russian officials touted the introduction of a “childless tax”—a proposal that was swiftly shutdown the Chairwoman of the Duma’s Committee on Family Protection, who called it immoral. Instead, she proposed an initiative requiring Russian schoolchildren from 5th to 11th grade to undergo mandatory “family studies” courses.
The long-term impact of Russia's severe crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community in the form of arrests and its repression of and pools of thought that promote female independence and fluid conceptions of family remain to be seen.
But despite the government’s efforts to portray Russia as a stronghold of traditional family values, the country’s marriage, divorce, and birth rate statistics tell a different story.
Do such measures have any effect?
Russian women continue to marry and have their first child earlier than their Western counterparts. In 2022, Russia's average age for women to marry was 26, while in Germany, it was 31.
Yet, despite brief upticks in marriage rates after the end of COVID-19 quarantine measures in 2021 and military mobilization in 2022, Russia’s marriage rate plummeted to just 5 per 1,000 people last year—lower than during the turbulent 1990s and only slightly above the European Union average.
The fertility rate required to sustain the population—2.1 children per family—is met in only two of Russia’s 85 regions: Tuva and Chechnya. Nationwide, the average stands at 1.46 children, similar to rates in Switzerland, Canada, and Norway. While maternity capital initially boosted birth rates in large families, its extension to first-time parents has diluted its impact, failing to reverse the overall decline.
Meanwhile, Russia’s divorce rate remains alarmingly high, at 4.7 per 1,000 people—double that of the United States and three times the rate in the Netherlands. Ironically, this high divorce rate is partly driven by financial incentives, with many Russians entering into sham marriages to access state benefits.
Over the past two decades, the Russian government has shifted from offering financial support to expectant mothers to embracing rhetoric of "civilizational" needs that include restricting abortion rights and limiting the freedoms of those who do not conform to the Kremlin's vision of “family values.”
While the true drivers of demographic decline—like Russia’s war, which has reportedly claimed 100,000 men, mostly of reproductive age—go unaddressed, the Kremlin’s radical conservatism mirrors trends in other countries. The shift from policies supporting newlyweds and mothers to aggressive pronatalism is not unique to Russia.
How Other Countries Stimulate Birth Rates and Restrict Women’s Rights
The defense of “family values” is not a Russian innovation but a global ideological trend, spanning both right and left. In 2021, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer invoked “family” 21 times in a pre-election essay, a shift from his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who opposed tax benefits for married couples. Some left-wing thinkers, like sociologist Wolfgang Streeck, argue that the nuclear family serves as a last refuge for workers stripped of rights by capitalism.
Right-wing populists, however, often move from rhetoric to coercion. Antonina Levandovska of Poland’s Federation for Women and Family Planning notes that forced pronatalism is not just patriarchy or misogyny—it is often a product of economic policies indifferent to women’s rights. Declining birth rates raise fears of economic stagnation, pressuring governments to raise retirement ages and push women into motherhood rather than overhauling pension systems or redistributing wealth.
Fifty years ago, many developing nations focused on population control, believing it would ease pressure on education and infrastructure. By 2015, however, nearly a third of the world’s countries had adopted pronatalist policies, up from just 10 percent in 1976, according to the United Nations. The UK-based NGO Population Matters tracks this shift, even in countries once concerned with overpopulation.
After its war with Iraq, Iran’s government subsidized contraception, bringing birth rates from nearly seven children per woman in the 1970s to below two today. But by 2014, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei set a goal to double the population, pushing women—now a majority in universities—to abandon “Western clichés” like careers.
China’s once-strict one-child policy has given way to fears of an aging population, leading to restrictions on contraception and state propaganda mocking childless professionals. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has framed abortion (still technically legal but increasingly restricted) as a conspiracy to “erase the Turkish people.” Turkish propaganda now calls having only two children “bankruptcy”—a stark reversal from the 1960s, when the government promoted family planning for economic growth.
Hungary’s pro-natalist policies stand out in Europe, with Viktor Orbán’s government allocating up to 5 percent of GDP to boost birthrates. Families receive generous loans—fully forgiven if they have three children—but must repay them in full within months if they divorce. While an abortion ban failed, Hungary amended its constitution to state that "life begins at conception."
In Poland, abortion remains strictly prohibited, and emergency contraception requires a prescription. Schools emphasize "family" over "sex" by a margin of 170 to 1 in their curriculum. In 2021, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic signed a declaration calling for "more European children" to preserve Christian identity.
In the U.S., the family remains central to political battles. During Donald Trump’s first term, the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights, and today, 13 states ban abortion entirely, with four more restricting it after six weeks. The nuclear family has long been a bipartisan ideal, but under Trump’s “new conservatives,” even traditional Republicans appear too moderate.
Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, argues in his manifesto that America’s decline stems from the collapse of the family. He calls for financial incentives for childbearing couples, a return to single-income households, and restrictions on abortion and IVF. His book’s foreword was written by Vice President JD Vance, who, after dismissing single women as “childless cat ladies,” was defended by Trump: “Vance loves families.”
Familialism in the Service of Capitalism
But why do such different countries, with varying political systems and cultural contexts, adopt similar strategies to encourage higher birth rates? This question points to a deeper issue: the role of capitalism in shaping family structures and the policies that emerge to support them.
In a 2020 essay for The Atlantic, David Brooks argued that “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake.” He traced its rise to the mid-20th century, when economic mobility and high wages for men made the two-parent household the norm. Unlike earlier, multigenerational family structures, the nuclear family lacked built-in support systems. Its survival depended on union-won wages, state benefits, and strict gender roles—women were barred from many jobs, abortion was widely banned, and domestic violence often went unpunished.
By the 1970s, this fragile foundation began to crack. Stagflation ended decades of economic growth, and neoliberal policies—deregulation, reduced social spending—gutted the safety net. As wages stagnated, “family values” rhetoric surged, justifying a shift of caregiving responsibilities back onto households. Moral, political, and economic forces reframed the family as sacred.
This link between family and capitalism was hardly new. Karl Marx saw capital’s need for a stable, reproducible workforce, while Friedrich Engels tied monogamy’s rise to private property and inheritance. By the 1960s, these critiques became central to feminist and activist movements, spurring experiments with communal living and queer cohabitation. But marriage rates have declined steadily since 1972, across the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
For Economist Milton Friedman, the Family Was a Necessary Element of the Free Market
While marriage rates in the West declined in the 1970s, the Soviet Union—free from austerity—saw a peak in 1979. Demographers call this the “second transition,” marking the decoupling of childbearing from marriage. Conservatives, meanwhile, viewed the era as a “crisis” of the family—one that could and should be reversed.
In 1981, Chicago School economist Gary Becker warned that the Western family had been “radically changed or even destroyed” by social programs like pensions and welfare, which eroded economic incentives for stable marriages. His work, along with that of Milton Friedman, framed the traditional family as essential to the free market: it encouraged hard work, financial prudence, and social stability. Government support, they argued, weakened these virtues, discouraging savings and innovation.
Neoliberal economics aligned with American neoconservative morality. In 1976, sociologist Daniel Bell suggested that social safety nets eliminated the anxiety that once restrained spending and, by extension, sexual behavior. Economist Samuel Huntington went further, blaming social spending—not Cold War military budgets—for the inflation crisis of the 1970s.
But the debate over family values was about more than economics. The democratic movements of the 1960s, from labor organizing to racial justice, threatened entrenched power structures. In response, an alliance of neoliberals and neoconservatives defended the family as the last bulwark against state dependency and social upheaval. As sociologist Melinda Cooper documents, this ideology shaped policies designed to shrink public obligations while reinforcing the family’s economic role.
By the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher mainstreamed this rhetoric, often with racial and homophobic undertones. Even later arguments for gay marriage followed the same logic: “I support gay marriage because I’m a conservative,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said in 2011.
The Export Product of Western Ideology
Fifteen years later, Cameron’s argument seems almost quaint. Today’s populist right gravitates toward more visceral ideas—racial replacement, civilizational conflict, and a duty to society. In Russia and Eastern Europe, “family values” rhetoric owes less to economists or geopoliticians than to American religious activists who found new allies after the Soviet collapse.
Russia has once again become a testing ground for anti-democratic strategies. The World Congress of Families, co-founded in 1995 by American historian Allan Carlson and Russian sociologist Anatoly Antonov, secured funding from Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev and ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. Its speakers have included Viktor Orbán and Matteo Salvini. While the group alone cannot explain the Kremlin’s fixation on “traditional values,” its rise coincided with Russia’s broader rollback of rights and public policy.
The irony is sharp: in the 1990s, neoliberal economists used Russia to test shock therapy; today, former Soviet intelligence operatives have repurposed Western conservatives’ own ideological tropes in a geopolitical standoff with the West. Yet the logic remains consistent. The family sustains private property, produces future workers, and reinforces borders—between nations, between “us” and “them.”
Michel Foucault once saw neoliberalism as a means of limiting state intervention through economic incentives but warned that governments could always return to direct control over citizens’ bodies. By the late 20th century, that shift was underway. Conservatives and neoliberals alike framed an aging population—not mass capital offshoring or financial speculation—as the real economic threat. The solution, importing cheap labor, provoked a populist backlash steeped in demographic panic.
Today’s right-wing populists, drawing from the same anxieties, seek to restore a rigid, disciplined family structure—one that has barely existed for a century.
In reality, countless forms of cohabitation, love, and mutual support exist—yet the state, for whatever reason, refuses to recognize them as legitimate families. And it’s not just about polyamorous households or communes. It’s unmarried couples building lives together, single mothers raising children with the help of relatives, longtime friends sharing an apartment and responsibilities.