Government sponsored breeding programs, medals of motherhood, forced abortions, and surgical sterilization on park benches - all of these policies have come out of government efforts to nationalize sex and harness procreation as a tool of the state.

Over 170 countries (or 85% of governments) worldwide have active policies designed to manipulate the fertility of their citizenry with the aim of influencing the rate of growth of their populations. While over 90% of least developed states are trying to combat population growth with policies designed to reduce fertility, over two-thirds of all developed countries are actively crafting legislation to increase their populations. Despite over a hundred years of relative failure and innumerable studies questioning the viability and utility of government attempts to manipulate the fertility rate of the population as a whole, the majority of governments worldwide continue to uphold and develop such policies. What drives government to try to control how many children people will have?

Nationalizing Sex traces why population emerged as an object of governance and how natalist policy has changed over time and place, using case studies from France, Germany, Russia, India, and China. It analyzes the origins, growth, and development of fertility as a national and international political issue, the rise and fall of the narratives used to ascribe meaning to natality, and the global proliferation of oddly similar policies adopted by widely dissimilar states. As importantly, it explains why, after hundreds of years, countries continue to pursue natalist policy even though it has been such a widespread failure.

Richard Togman's profile page

Dr. Richard Togman received his PhD from the University of British Columbia specializing in political demography. Having worked at institutions including the National Defense University, Canadian Armed Forces and the Chamber of Commerce, Dr. Togman brings a wealth of experience to this field. After publishing in a number of leading journals, Dr. Togman founded a company, Rent Panda, in the housing sector to capitalize on his unique insights into demography and population trends.

"A magnificent book on one of the greatest puzzles of the modern world: when, why, and how individuals' interests and actions of procreation became the subjects of the nation state's control and dominance. With his sweeping and encyclopedic review and critical analysis, Togman has written a masterpiece on the construction of natalism as a universal mental frame, and the many fallacies, sacrifices, and ironies in its implementation by the state and other participants."

--Wang Feng, Professor, University of California, Irvine

"Nationalizing Sex disrupts our ability to take for granted 'the population' as an object of governance or an issue of national security. By peeling back the layers of discourse on population and nation-building, Togman shows how citizens developed a sexual duty to the state and how governments inserted themselves in the business of baby-making. A great marriage of political science and population studies."

--Jennifer D. Sciubba, Stanley J. Buckman Professor of International Studies, Rhodes College

"How many people should a country have? And should that be a decision made by the state, or left to its citizens? This impressive history of population policies since the 17th century shows the remarkable degree to which all states-monarchies, communist, liberal democracies-have sought to shape the numbers of their citizens. Documenting how state policies have swung from pro-natal to anti-natal and back in historic waves, Togman shows how pervasive, yet often ineffective, these policies have been."

--Jack A. Goldstone, Hazel Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University