One Russian MP has proposed a strange ‘sex leave’ scheme for Russian workers which would see them take paid leave to copulate in a bid to improve the country’s falling birth rate
One saucy Kremlin tactic to try and get the dwindling Russian population to procreate could see workers receive paid ‘sex leave’. Kremlin-loyal MP Georgy Arapov, 25, proposed the sex break scheme that would see an annual “demographic” week to urge couples to copulate.
“For many citizens it would be a rare opportunity to stop, breathe out, recover from stress and come to that internal state that doctors and psychologists call optimal for making a decision to have a child,” said Arapov, the country’s youngest MP, who is not known to have children. “For single people interested in starting a family, such a week could be used for meeting people and building serious relationships.”
It comes as data revealed last month Russia’s birth rate had plunged to a 200-year low. This is despite attempts by the state to encourage Russians to have more children including restrictions on abortion.
Labour Minister Anton Kotyakov, 44, called for a feasibility study to be taken, while pro-Putin archpriest and propagandist Andrei Tkachev, 55, called for a tax on men who fail to father children.
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Tkachev, an orthodox cleric, said: “A childlessness tax shouldn’t be big, but it should be symbolic so that you’re stigmatised with it, like ‘Why didn’t you father a single child by 40?’” He asked: “Who are these men, aged 40 and without a single child – who are they?”
Tkachev added: “This is some special category of human drones, who…didn’t you know a woman, have you never been intimate with a woman in 40 years of your life? And if you’ve had many women, why haven’t you made a single woman your wife?”
He continued to question men who had not had a woman give birth for them and who had not become a father. “You’ve just slept with them, and lived like a drone,” he said in a bizarre rant, suggesting that men who lived to the age of 45 without having children might be “castrated” or “sick”.
Last year, the health ministry for the Primorsy region, Dr Yevgeny Shestopalov, suggested Russian workers could have sex during their coffee and lunch breaks in factories. Dr Shestopalov called on people to “engage in procreation on breaks”.
He said being busy with work is “not a valid reason” not to attempt to conceive children while working. He said: “Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse. You can engage in procreation during breaks, because life flies by too quickly.”
Further whacky proposals by Russian politicians have previously been put forward. One idea was to set up a Ministry of Sex to oversee such initiatives.
One suggestion was to turn off the internet and lights between 10pm and 2am to encourage couples to have sex. Another said the state should pay for first dates to the tune of around £40, while some thought the Russian government should pay stay-at-home women raising children for doing housework and to include this in their pension calculations.
Female students in Khabarovsk region aged 18 to 23 are to be paid the equivalent of £900 for the birth of their first child. Students in Chelyabinsk could be paid £8,500 for doing the same thing.
Pregnant schoolgirls in the in Oryol region will be handed almost £1,000 in cash as part of a scheme piloted in March. The policy, which has been signed into law by Putin-loyalist governor Andrey Klychkov, will see teenage girls and university students qualify if they are more than 12 weeks pregnant. There is no minimum age for pregnant girls to receive the payment of 100,000 Russian rubles, equivalent to £920.
The policy, which has been signed into law by Putin-loyalist governor Andrey Klychkov, will see teenage girls and university students qualify if they are more than 12 weeks pregnant. There is no minimum age for pregnant girls to receive the payment of 100,000 Russian rubles, equivalent to £920.
Putin has insisted: “The preservation of the Russian people is our highest national priority.” He also said: “The fate of Russia….depends on how many of us there will be. It is a question of national importance.” Anna Kuznetsova, a prominent Russian politician, has demanded women start giving birth at a young age, around “19 to 20 years old”.