The latest report by WCIOM states that Russians believe there should be 2-3 kids in a family. Moreover, kids are the purpose of a marriage.

WCOIM poll: Kids are the purpose of a marriage

If you are a resident of Russia, you would be hearing about results of polls by WCIOM, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, regularly though major media outlets.

WCIOM became a state-sponsored tool to push ideas approved by the government into masses.

There are many stories online how phone interviewers of WCIOM drop conversations, once they see it’s not going towards the results they should be presenting for public consumption. As such, many Russians, especially the young generation, are highly skeptical about results of such polls.

However, even though the authenticity of the results may be in doubt, reports by WCIOM are an excellent diagnostic tool to see what opinions are being promoted as being held by the majority of Russians. In other words, such reports provide excellent insights into the government’s agenda.

This is why the recent report by WCIOM emphasizing that “kids are the goal of a marriage” is particularly interesting.

Family with 2 kids used to be the ideal in Russia; now opinion polls indicate a family with 3 children is viewed as perfect.

Russian demographic disaster

The Russian government has been pushing for citizens to have more kids for decades. The drop in the number of newborns in 1990s is coming into fruition now, with fewer new employees entering the workforce. In 2017 the number of deaths exceeding the number of births by 135 thousand, which is 0.9% negative growth. The numbers went into the negative territory already in 2016, but there were only 2.3 thousand more deaths than births. Now the trend is alarming. The fertility rate is also on decline, according to the official statistics.

The need to have more workers was likely another reason for the recently announced pension reform, which will see the pension age lifted to 65 from 60 for males and to 63 from 55 for women, along with the lack of funds to pay out retirement benefits. The aged workers will have to continue their careers for another 5-8 years, compensating for the lack of new staff.

The number of deaths exceeds the number of newborns in Russia for some time, but it was previously compensated by the influx of migrants, predominantly from Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union. But it seems that this influx is not enough to keep the population numbers on the level they are now.

Besides, many analysts believe that Russian statisticians over-report population numbers, while the real statistics is much bleaker.

Emigration

The recent report by WCIOM showed that 1 in 3 Russians under 25 years of age wants to emigrate. That number coming from WCIOM is a tell-tale sign of a big-scale problem.

Experts point out that there is a large under-reported migration out of Russia, where citizens don’t inform the state about their plans to settle in another country, but actually live outside the national borders for years with no desire to return. Many of them live in foreign countries on student visas, due to complexity of obtaining the status of a permanent resident. But they may be considered residents of Russia by the statistics.

Early mortality among males

Another giant problem for Russia is high early mortality among males.

The macho culture requiring males to be fearless and take risks. This deeply ingrained attitude, along with the silent approval of violence in interpersonal conflicts and high rates of alcohol abuse, lead to quite expected results: with the birth rates of 106 boys to 100 girls, by the age of 25 there are more women than men in large cities of Russia.

Country-wide across all ages there are 86 males for 100 females.

High divorce rates

Russia is also the country that stays in the pack of leaders on divorce statistics. While in western countries couples often live together without getting married for years, in Russia the societal attitudes push lovers to wed.

The worst divorce rate in Russia was in 2002, when there were 84 divorces for every 100 marriages. In 2017 divorce rate was 58%, down 4% on the previous year.

Cohabitation leaves a woman unprotected, as there are still no laws on property sharing between de-facto spouses in Russia. Such a law was drafted in January 2018 but hasn’t been not accepted.

The public opinion in Russia denounces de-facto marriages and considers women who cohabit with a male to be living in sin. It’s viewed as a woman’s fault because she is the one to manage her reproductive opportunities correctly and get a husband as opposed to a lover.

The influence of Christian Orthodox church in Russia has been growing substantially over the past decade, with the blessing of the state. The church’s opinion on cohabitation remains that it’s “living in sin”. Only a marriage registered by the state and blessed by a priest is a proper marriage, in the church’s view.

It should be noted that in Russia couples can only wed in church after first registering nuptials at the government register.

Patriarchal views

Social views in Russia has changed dramatically since the times of the USSR. Equality of men and women, often highlighted by females entering traditional male domains during Soviet times — if you recall it, the first female astronaut was Russian — was replaced with the view that women will be better off concentrating on tasks of raising the family, if they wish to achieve happiness in life.

Female happiness, which used to be the same as a male’s until early 1990s — USSR collapsed in 1991 — has been pronounced to lie in the family. Comfortable home, happy kids and a loving husband, this is what the ideal of a happy woman is in Russia. Unless she has that, she has nothing in life, society holds.

This transition from the views of “total equality of men and women” to the idea of a completely different ideal of female happiness to a male’s was made possible by propagation of patriarchal views, which are also being promoted with the nod of approval from the state.

In fact, Russian ideal of a happy life is now similar to the one pre-revolution of 1917. A woman who is staying at home looking after the family and a husband who is providing enough to keep the family prosperous.

Thus, the unmarried woman’s goal is to find a husband and get married, and for a wife it is to raise kids and look after the family. Russian men believe that women should get married by 21. So, a female has only 3 years to find a husband and wed, after she turns 18, the legal age for marriage in Russia.

Another driver pushing young people to marriage is the desire to get away from parents’ dictatorship. In Russia kids usually live with parents until they are married and often even young couples reside with parents of the husband or the wife, due to high cost of rentals proportionately to wages. Once the kids are married, they are given more independence and ability to choose for themselves. No surprises that often young people feel locked in a marriage, especially if they had kids straight away. This, too, contributes to high divorce rates.

Many young males feel trapped in a marriage with kids, finding escape in drinking with friends.

The goal of a marriage is to have kids

Now the new WCIOM research promotes the idea that the goal of the marriage is having kids and there should be minimum of 2-3 children in the family. Definitely, speeding up reproduction patterns when women have kids at an earlier age and do not delay it until later times is more likely to result in healthy pregnancies and births. Besides, by the age of 40 there will be 2 generation of kids, not just one as in western countries.

It’s not rare for Russian women to become grandmothers in later 30s, as having kids in late teenage years is considered desirable and normal. Why not, if the woman’s goal in life is to get married, and the goal of a marriage is to have kids?

Young people in Russia, who are the most impressionable, absorb these views through the state-directed propaganda, which permeates all media and show business. WCIOM is also first of all a tool to promote societal attitudes and views, rather than gather relevant sociological data.

It’s hard to know what people really think in Russia and how each individual relates to the widely-promoted views, but it’s easy to gather what the government wants people to think. In Russia, it wants people to think that the goal of a marriage is having 2-3 kids.

In addition to pushing the urgency to get married for women, for the fear of being left alone unless she finds a partner preferably by 21 (24 the latest), the idea “The goal of a marriage is to have kids” adds to the urgency of starting a family rather than first obtaining education and building a financially secure platform for future life as a family.

WCOIM shows higher rates of people thinking there should be 3 kids in a family

The data by WCOIM show the movement towards the government-promoted goals of increasing populations size.

In 2014 only 28% of people thought that an ideal family should have 3 kids; 2018 survey shows this number having risen to 43%.

The results show that only 3% of people in 2018 stated that an ideal family would have 1 child, while 44% believe there should be 2 kids.

• The vast majority of responses in the survey indicated that the purpose of a marriage is having kids and having an offspring makes a family stronger: 54%.
• Taking care of kids is the meaning of life, 21% of respondents agreed.
• Further 14% of respondents agreed that having kids will improve the demographics and they are the future of the humankind.
• 12% of survey respondents think that kids would support parents in their old age.
• 7% of answers indicated that kids are simply “a great happiness”.

44% of survey respondents indicated that the reason why people decide to don’t have kids is money, that’s the leading answer. Surprisingly, not a desire to travel, get an education, enjoy life without responsibilities.

The next opinion why people do not have kids will amaze you: 25% of answers in the WCIOM survey stated that not having kids is “egoism”.

The third most popular opinion, according to WCOIM, is “unwillingness to take on responsibility” (12%).

Not having a home and poor health scored 9% each as reasons not to have kids.

7% of WCIOM respondents stated that career could be the reason to stay childless, while 6% believe that the right to make one’s personal choice about having or not having kids should be respected. 5% of answers state that it’s “stupid, lazy, narrow-minded people” who do not have children.

What Russian women think about family is formed by the society

When I write about Russian women’s views on marriage and family and the reasons why some ladies choose to seek a partner abroad, some readers may see it as an advertising agenda. But it’s the other way around. The advertising agendas in Russia drive women to seek partners elsewhere. Females are so brainwashed that without having a man in their lives they don’t see any sense in their existence. Lack of men in Russia is a continuous problem, so it’s no wonders that with the options offered by Internet they started looking elsewhere.

In fact, the views of Russian women seeking partners abroad are aligned with the societal attitudes that dictate for a female to first seek a husband and then bear kids and care for the family as the only means to achieve personal happiness and self-realization.

Now the opinion-making machine is obviously working on not only making women believe that they will only be happy when find a husband, but also pushes them to think they need to have 2-3 kids as soon as possible, as this should strengthen the marriage and give them even more happiness and meaning in life.

Such attitudes that are strongly promoted in the society can only lead to more women feeling desperate in their inability to find fulfillment of their ideal at home and seeking to broaden their options by looking for a husband abroad. Yes, it’s a small share of single females that chooses this option, but as long as Internet is not locked in Russia (which is a possibility), you will see large numbers of women listing their profiles on international dating sites like ElenasModels.com.

The outcome, whether they will be able to establish a connected with someone, will depend, first of all, on whether the man is able to understand the underlying values and societal pressures experienced by the young woman and show her how he can fulfill her goals and aspirations.

Read also:

• 7 complaints of Ukrainian wives
• A Russian woman’s opinion: Why Western men are better
• Is it possible for me to meet a good Russian woman for marriage?
• 8 advantages of finding a marriage partner in Eastern Europe