Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

How optimistic are people about bringing children into the world? How have families been changing? In this time of interconnected uncertainty in the Americas, Europe, and Eurasia, highlighted by difficulties of discerning accurate public opinion, it is sometimes appropriate to turn to basic sociological clues. People tend to “vote with their feet” (and other body parts) when it comes to having children. Historically, poor people in preindustrial societies and in rural areas had large families because children were insurance policies for kin-group survival. In contrast, urban and elite families historically and in recent times in Europe, the United States, and Russia were optimistic enough that their children would survive that they did not need to have many children. With urbanization and industrialization, birth rates and associated indicators of “natality began inexorable declines, in many places to below replacement level. What has been considered “progress” by some, including feminists, became alarming according to nationalistic leaders, often men, advocating “family values” and worried about population fertility. In Russia, the calculus behind some attitudes toward having children began to shift in the 1960s and especially after the Soviet Union’s collapse. In the 1990s, a general decline in birth rates and a horrific mass contemplation of economic strife, marked by downward mobility trends and a zigzagging middle class, meant that families on average in Russia had far fewer children. This was particularly true of Russian Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia, vol. 55, no. 2, 2016, pp. 107–112. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1061-1959 (print)/ISSN 1558-092X (online) DOI: 10.1080/10611959.2016.1309924