Commentary
Democratic Security
The Taiwan Strait Runs Through Central European Economies
9 June 2026
7 March 2023
What constitutes a family in Poland is changing rapidly, but the ruling party won’t accept or adapt to the new reality.
The declining fertility rate in Poland, which dropped to 1.32 in 2021, has forced government officials and members of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) to resort to counterfactual rhetoric, i.e. disinformation, in order to explain the changes to the family unit.
When after an initial increase number of births per woman nearly returned to the level before the conservative party took power in 2015, decision-makers started blaming the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine as factors contributing to global insecurity preventing potential parents from having children.
In others words, if it were not for the coronavirus and Putin, Law and Justice’s family programmes would have brought the desired increase in fertility rates.