Sex and the State

Abstract

Chapter 1 begins by laying out the fundamental question of the book: What accounts for the ongoing choices of world leaders at multiple levels of governance to spend vast sums of money and manpower to instill a sexual duty to the state and policies designed to manipulate fertility that have a relatively robust record of failure? It explains government motivation as rooted in a narrative crafted to give meaning to fertility and in the discursive linkages drawn between fertility and the major threats a country perceives itself to face that determine government action. Moreover, this chapter outlines an explanation of why natalist policy typically fails. This book argues that the dissonance between macro understandings of fertility at the state level and micro understandings of fertility as practiced by individuals lies at the heart of the failure of policy.