Analysis of Baby-Boom Promoting Billboards in Iran
285sensitive, and a future-building one. Giving birth to children is a great
sacrifice.’Ayatollah Khamenei calls for taking back the social and religious
values used to be associated with the role of women as housewives, a role
which seems to have taken humiliating overtones among the Iranian
middle-class, mainly due to “westernization of Iranian families and
improvements in female education” (Fahimi 2002) among other influential
factors. He uses the religious notion of mojâhedat ‘sacrifice’ to appreciate
the role women can play in bringing up children who can contribute to
building the future of the country. Mojâhedat involves endeavor, tolerating
hardships and sacrifice for a valuable goal.
The leader refers to western lifestyle as a major factor in the current
attitude of Iranians toward family size:
(8) Yek negah e moghaledanei be zendegi e gharbi ya be zendegi e orupai
vojud dashte ke be inja montahi shode va mirase anha be ma reside. Ma ham
dar yek borhei az zaman gheflat kardim kari ke bayad anjam bedahim anjam
nadadim, dar hali ke emruz dar bazi az hamin keshvarhaye gharbi az kahesh e
barvari darand zian mibinan va pashimanand (www.khamenei.ir, 30/10/2013).
‘There has been an imitation of western or European lifestyle which has
resulted in this [couples avoiding having more children] and we inherited this.
At some point, we neglected the issue [people ́s sticking to family planning],
we did not do what we should have done [ending family planning policy].
Some of these European countries are now making a loss due to low fertility
rate and they regret it [their policies for controlling the population].’Western lifestyle and its impact on Iranians’ family culture may in
part be attributed to a positive stereotype of Europeans in the minds of
Iranians, at least when it comes to education and family structure.
Referring to the negative outcomes of family planning in western countries
might be seen as means of challenging a seemingly established mentality
which represents a positive image of westerners’ life pattern and makes it
worth imitating. This mentality may simply be called the-Other-is-right or
the-Other-knows-more mentality, the ones which the supreme leader may
have tried to question.
Similar to the supreme leader, the ex-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
alienates family planning by calling it a western scheme:
(9) man shoare do bacheh kafist ra ghabul nadaram, in masale siasate ghalati
bud k gharbiha entekhab karde va emruz pashiman hastand va sarmayeye
sangini ra baraye hefze hoviat va farhang e khod mipardazand
(www.khabaronline.ir, 04/04/2010)