16

This article analyzes the development of Russian family policy from the breakup of the USSR to the present. After the collapse of the USSR, the country’s limited resources prompted the government to shift from a universal family policy to a policy that targeted vulnerable families. In the midst of a demographic crisis in the 2000s, the state encouraged women to adopt the reproductive norm of at least two children by allocating family allowances as a function of the number of children. The government extended this norm to relations between family members and, in the 2010s, embarked on a campaign for a family model — a married, heterosexual couple with three children — that it explicitly described as “traditional”. This analysis of the Russian example helps us better understand the sociological mechanisms that affect trends in the field of family policies.