About 47 years ago, the motto “Fewer children, better life” penetrated deep into Iranians’ homes and affected reproduction norms in the quest for a more comfortable lifestyle. The slogan was a major effort by the Pahlavi administration to curb population growth, a campaign to persuade families to have fewer children.

Last year, Iran’s supreme leader presented an extremely different and updated approach to people’s private lives, encouraging them to produce more children and adding that the Iranian population should move toward at least 150 million people (almost double that of today).

Over the past year, the government and nongovernmental organizations have attempted to spread Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s words discouraging people from using contraception.

During the early years following the 1979 revolution, the newly founded Islamic Republic of Iran tried its best to persuade people to produce more children. Soon after the conclusion of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, the administration commenced organized efforts to dissuade couples from reproduction and basically emphasized the same exact message that the previous government had been so adamant to spread.