Conclusion

Chapter 11 concludes the book and reflects on the lessons that can be learned from a holistic overview of the past three hundred years of governments’ attempts to manipulate the fertility of their populations. Reiterating the fundamentally discursive nature of the meaning of birth, fertility, and population growth to our societies allows for reflective insight into the nature of state attempts to manipulate the decision by millions of individuals about whether to reproduce. The global comparative perspective in both time and space, the identification and typologization of the five main discursive frames, and the rooting of the analysis in the discursive terrain allow the major questions of who, what, when, where, and why regarding government efforts to control the reproductive powers of the population and the creation of a sexual duty to the state to be answered.