Nationalizing Sex

Abstract

Abstract Over the past three hundred years there have been countless attempts by governments of all types to control fertility and reproduction. Currently, more than 170 countries representing over 85 percent of humanity are actively trying to engineer how many children a person will have. Democratic, authoritarian, religious, secular, Western, Eastern, and African states have all tried with little success to control individual fertility decisions. This presents a series of interesting puzzles. Why do governments want to control childbearing decisions? What are they trying to achieve? Moreover, almost all attempts to control fertility have failed. Policies rarely, if ever, achieve government objectives. Accordingly, why do policies so routinely fail? Why do governments of all shapes and sizes continue to create policies that have a robust record of failure? What accounts for such unusual cross-national trends in government attempts to instill a sexual duty to the state? This book fills the gap by analyzing the origins, growth, and development of fertility as a national and international political issue; the rise and fall of the discourses used to ascribe meaning to natality; and the global proliferation of isomorphic policies adopted by widely dissimilar states. It proposes an explanation for the widespread failure of hundreds of years of policy.

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