Episode Details

Russia’s Health Ministry just issued new guidelines: during routine reproductive health checks, doctors are now supposed to ask women how many children they want. If a woman says “zero,” the recommendation is to refer her to a medical psychologist to help form “positive attitudes toward childbirth.”

In this episode of Based Camp, Simone and Malcolm break down the policy, Russia’s broader pro-natal cultural offensive (including the new ban on childfree propaganda, revived Mother Heroine medals, and “Year of the Family” initiatives), and whether framing voluntary childlessness as a psychological issue worth treating is a smart move or dystopian overreach.

They explore:

* Why this targets culture rather than just throwing money at the problem

* The surprisingly recent history of “aspirational childfree” as a celebrated lifestyle

* How societies throughout history viewed women who didn’t want children

* Whether therapists could actually help shift mindsets (or if the real power is in the framing)

* Bold ideas like no income tax for parents, school choice, and normalizing motherhood again

Provocative, data-rich, and unapologetically pro-family. If you’re tired of the “childfree is empowerment” narrative and want to talk seriously about reversing fertility collapse, this one’s for you.

Episode Transcript

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because Russia has introduced a new health ministry guideline saying that women who say they don’t want children should be referred for psychological counseling.

And, and Russian officials present this as a prenatal measure to address, you know, their,

Malcolm Collins: and I was like, I heard it and it generally was multi totalitarian things. I don’t like this much. This when I’m like. My gut says yes, I like this. I like framing it as a psychological disorder for a woman to not want children.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And you, you actually like it, it was fairly late at night. You just burst into my room and you were like, Russia’s making like aspirational dinks, go to see therapists. And we both had a good laugh about it, but then I, I went and I looked up what the policy actually does. So basically during reproductive health assessments, doctors have been told.

That they should ask women how many children they want to have, which is a little dystopian. And then if a woman [00:01:00] says that she does not want any children, the guideline says it is recommended or advisable to send her to a medical psychologist, quote, you know, from Russian quote, to form positive attitudes toward childbirth and reports so far.

Describe this as part of clinical guidelines from, from the health ministry and, and not, they’re not like a formal criminal or administrative mandate with explicit penalties for refusing counseling.

So this isn’t some dystopian thing. In fact, I think that this is. This is important for us to discuss and interesting because this is just one of many Russian measures that are targeting. The one thing we say actually matters when it comes to prenatal laws policy, which is culture. To your point that you’re building this cultural precedent around a.

Shifting the way that women contextualize their choices around not having children. And I think that that’s really super interesting. By the way, men are they, they’re not asked equivalent questions.

Malcolm Collins: What? That, that’s where they’re [00:02:00] failing. But I do also like that they frame this as like an explicit problem for women.

Mm-hmm. Like women. What is wrong with you? That you do not want children? All women want children, right? Unless there’s something seriously psychologically wrong with you.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s what they