History Main / BabyFactory

-->'''Queen Aemma:''' "We have royal wombs, you and I. The childbed is our battlefield."

Take the female body. Now, instead of visualizing a human being, with all the markings of independent thought and higher intelligence, visualize [[MookMaker an organic device that can be used to create babies]]. This is no doubt rather creepy (particularly for our female viewers), but sometimes this is because it is believed to be necessary, to deal with a heavily depleted race of species. On the other hand, this trope can just as easily be engaged in for the sake of evil. Babies can be sold for delicious, delicious profit. Or alternatively, [[EatsBabies they're just delicious]]. [[BreedingCult You can guess]] [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil what a sufficiently evil character]] [[SexSlave will do]] [[BreedingSlave from this point]].

[[folder:Real Life]]
* According to {{Nazisploitation}} films and novels (even some mainstream fiction picked up the {{Urban Legend|s}}, e.g. ''Bear Island'' by Alistair [=MacLean=]) ThoseWackyNazis would select racially pure German women to be impregnated by virile SS men, in order to create the MasterRace. In actuality, while the Nazis did have an organisation that helped care for the offspring of SS members (even illegitimate children) with the goal of increasing the birth rate (which had fallen drastically due to the Great Depression), there was no 'breeding program'.
** They did, however, encourage women to have children by giving them rewards for doing so. The more children they had, the bigger their rewards would be - some were even given medals for doing "great service to their country". While they weren't forced into it, to increase the birthrate, they made it worth the girl's while to get married to an SS soldier and have several children by him.
** German soldiers in occupied territories were discouraged from forming relationships with local women. The exception to this was in countries that were perceived as being more "Aryan," that is to say Norway and Denmark. Here the soldiers were not only encouraged to seek out the company of the local women, there was also built a state-of-the-art hospital in Norway specifically for expecting women where the child had a German father.
* On a related vein, in UsefulNotes/FascistItaly women were given medals for bearing many children, and soldiers were required to salute pregnant women. Mussolini specifically said motherhood is to women what war is to men, which should give you some idea where he was coming from.
* The [[LesCollaborateurs government]] of [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Vichy France]] made it illegal for married women to work in civil service, restricted divorce until it was almost impossible, and made abortion a crime against the state. Pétain at least partially blamed the fall of France on women stepping away from their "natural roles" as mothers to work.
* Members of the Christian Identity movement, a group of {{Right Wing Militia Fanatic}}s and white supremacists in the United States, turned down a woman who wanted to learn how to fight in preparation for an allegedly upcoming race war. They allegedly laughed and said, "Women are for breeding".
* The concept of 'let's specifically reward women for having kids' is becoming more and more common in those countries where the fertility rate has fallen close to or below the replacement level (2.1 kids per couple). Russia, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Italy, Germany and Poland outright 'give' stuff to couples who have children (Singapore increases the amount paid per child- $3,000 for having one kid, $18,000 for having a third). Sweden's very generous parental leaves stem in part from the concept of, "If we make having kids easier, there will be MORE of them!" Results are mixed, but Russia had population growth in 2009 for the first time in fifteen years. The biggest argument against this method is that it encourages citizens from overpopulated countries such as India and China to immigrate to any one of these nations for their benefits and have as many children as they want.
** Alternatively, instead of giving money for having extra children, an effort is made to reduce the disadvantage of having children. The most common measures taken are improving access to professional childcare, and extending parental leaves to both parents, but improved access to midwives is also among the options.
** The concerns about non-natives benefitting from incentives to have more children can be addressed by simply restricting said incentives to native people. The problem with that solution is that it could violate anti-racial discrimination laws in some countries.
* UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan encouraged women to live by the creed of "Umeyo fuyaseyo okunino tameni!" (tr: "Let's have babies and multiply for the good of the Empire!").
* Immigrants are often seen as this by the native population, especially when they receive financial aid based on the number of children they have. It contributes significantly to the distrust they receive.
* UsefulNotes/NewZealand's Domestic Purposes Benefit (Sole Parent) is a special type of unemployment benefit given to solo parents with dependent children, with the condition they do not have to actively seek employment until their youngest child turns six. Right-wing politicians claim the benefit has resulted in a generation of welfare-dependent baby factories, popping out a baby every five years to flout the part time work condition.
* The "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiverfull Quiverfull]]" movement is a sect of Christianity which basically states that [[BreedingCult couples must produce as many "Soldiers of God" as they possibly can]], like [[{{Pun}} filling up a "quiver" with arrows]]. Women who subscribe to this ideology are often ''constantly'' pregnant. The TV show ''Series/NineteenKidsAndCounting'' on Creator/{{TLC}} follows the lives of one of these families, the Duggars. (Note that the Duggars have stated that they are not part of the Quiverfull movement, but they are are still associated with it because of the number of children they have.) More mainstream Evangelical Christian denominations still uphold [[StayInTheKitchen stay-at-home motherhood]] as an ideal, even if they're only expected to have the usual number of children.
* UsefulNotes/{{Romania}} under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu was notorious for this. Abortion was illegal and each woman was expected to bear at least four children. As a result, Romanian orphanages became extremely overcrowded and understaffed.
** Not to mention abortion actually increased as all contraception was also banned. And the long term effects is that [[{{Irony}} it actually caused a net decrease in population]] as a lot of kids died from lack of care and women died from back alley abortions. It caused a generation who hated Ceaușescu too, and overthrew him after they grew up, thus he ended up [[HoistByHisOwnPetard engineering his downfall]].
* This trope is intrinsic to a traditional hereditary monarchy. The purpose of the king is to rule and the purpose of the queen is to give birth to an heir. Of course, the king has to contribute a little something to the heir-making process too. Nevertheless, the only essential purpose of a queen consort is to make a baby. When UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte realized that he needed an heir for his empire, he divorced his beloved but middle-aged wife Josephine so that he could marry a younger and more fertile woman. After his new marriage to Marie Louise, Napoleon famously remarked that he had "married a womb". This can be gender-flipped if a queen is the sovereign, in which case the only essential purpose of the prince consort is to impregnate her, but that's rarer since most monarchies throughout history have favored male heirs.
** Marie Louise's own great-grandmother was Empress Maria Theresa, the only Holy Roman Empress. Being an only child in a family whose lack of heirs just caused the War of Spanish Succession, her father spent much of his reign on the Pragmatic Sanction to allow her to rule. Yet, she was still expected to be a figurehead for her husband and eventual children, with her intended to continue the dynasty as a baby factory. Marie Louise agreed to let a male successor replace her reign when one appeared, and proceeded to bear 16 children, 12 whom survived to adulthood, and help greatly replenish the dynasty. She also [[PregnantBadass reigned while bearing those 16 children across 2 wars]] as an Absolute Monarch who prevented the Empire from falling apart. Her husband was reduced to a prince-consort, who had an unknown number of additional illegitimate children due to his many affairs.
*** A common saying about the Hapsburg became "Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube" or Let others wage war: thou, happy Austria, marry.
** Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands treated her consort Henry as this. She was stern, religious, and frugal. He was gregarious, good humored and had difficulty in accepting his weak position within the power structure. After several miscarriages, they finally had their first and only daughter, and after that they lived separate.
* Captive breeding programs for endangered species play this trope straight, often accelerating the process via interventions such as removing a captive bird pair's first batch of eggs for hand-rearing so they'll immediately produce another.
* German politician Frauke Petry of the right-wing party [=AfD=] party wants a [[http://www.noz.de/deutschland-welt/politik/artikel/500073/afd-petry-will-volksentscheid-uber-abtreibung referendum]] to restrict abortion (which is not technically legal in Germany, merely ''tolerated'' in some cases) even more. She also is of the opinion that each German woman should have at least three children, to "secure the survival of our people". Why she seems to think that ''immigrants'', who are least able to go abroad for an abortion, won't have more babies, too, when they're not able to get abortions, is anyone's guess.
* The Code of Hammurabi stated that if a wife was not able to bear children, she was to have her husband sleep with one of her slaves or servants, who would then bear the child on her behalf. This method was used in Literature/TheBible by Abraham, who had a child with his slave Hagar before God miraculously made his wife Sarah fertile.
* During TheMiddleAges, it was not uncommon for royal and noble women to hire wet nurses to feed their babies, so that they could return to fertility faster. It was important for upper-class women to have many children, because there was a good chance that some of them would not reach adulthood...but ''someone'' was needed to [[HeirClubForMen carry on the family name and inherit wealth and titles]].
* TruthInTelevision for many animal species:
** In a number of insect species, adults of one or both sexes have significantly reduced anatomy; their sole purpose at that phase is to mate, produce offspring (if female), and then die, usually immediately afterward. This is taken [[ExaggeratedTrope Up to Eleven]] by bagworm moths, where females are almost literally egg sacs, with no eyes, legs, wings, or a digestive tract; the males simply mate with them, the females lay their eggs, and they die (in fact, some species don't even lay the eggs; the young have to emerge from their mothers' corpse).
** Any sort of hive queen (whether a real creature such as bees, or a fantasy creature or race), whose primary (or only) purpose is to [[MookMaker pop out eggs or babies]]. Male drones are a gender-flipped example, doing no work and existing solely to mate with the queen before dying -- usually by [[BodyHorror having their genitals explode]].
** The most notable case would be the queen termite, who is basically a huge mass of ovaries with a mouth, laying a hundred eggs a minute for the entirety of her 20-year lifespan. While a queen ant or bee still resembles her offspring, and retains much of their mobility from before they reached breeding age, the queen termite has swollen to a length of about six to seven inches, and looks more like a fat, white maggot with a tiny termite head on one end. She is completely unable to move, or feed and defend herself, and is solely dependent on the care of her innumerable young.
** Most female mammals continuously produce young as long as conditions are right, with the only breaks being for raising existing offspring. Female kangaroos often have a baby in the pouch and at the same time a fetus in the womb.
** Rabbits are famous for being {{Explosive Breeder}}s, and for good reason. A female rabbit has the ability to ovulate immediately after mating, thus ensuring a pregnancy. Within hours of giving birth, a female can mate and become pregnant again. And to top it all off, in some species, the two horns of the uterus can carry two separate litters in a process called ''superfetation'', allowing the female to churn out up to a dozen litters (ranging from six to ten babies) every year!
** Aphids (a insect known for infesting crops). Because of BizarreAlienBiology, they reproduce with or without a male depending on the season, and give birth to offspring ''that are pregnant by parthenogenesis before they are even born.'' There can be 41 generations of aphids in a season, and theoretically one female could produce billions of descendants, assuming none die. There's a reason farmers and gardeners love [[AnimalJingoism ladybugs]].
** Gender Inverted with some anglerfish. Male anglerfish are small and have highly developed senses for the sole purpose of finding females; once they find one, they bite the females, and end up fusing into the female down to the blood vessel level to become a symbiotic organism; the male can survive off the female's circulatory system in exchange for providing sperm to the female.
[[/folder]]

* ''Literature/AfterTheRevolution'': The Heavenly Kingdom subscribes to a mixture of the Quiverful ideology (see the RealLife section) and the ideology of ISIS. It catfishes and attracts young christian women from outside its borders by promising them marriages to handsome young men and a meaningful life as volunteers in God's Kingdom, but in reality treats them as little more than breeding stock to produce babies, often through forcible marriages to any martyr nearby who 'claims' them.

* The Christian Identity movement, a group of {{Right Wing Militia Fanatic}}s and white supremacists in the United States, turned down a woman who wanted to learn how to fight in preparation for an allegedly upcoming race war. They laughed and said, "Women are for breeding".

** Alternatively, instead of giving money for having extra children, an effort is made to reduce disadvantage of having children. The most common measures taken are improving access to professional childcare, and extending parental leaves to both parents, but improved access to midwives is also among the options.

* Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu was notorious for this. Abortion was illegal and each woman was expected to bear at least four children. As a result, Romanian orphanages became extremely overcrowded and understaffed.

* ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' breaches this while discussing the plan that [[spoiler:Eren and Zeke]] had to keep the people in the Walls safe once and for all in regard to Historia Reiss. She being the [[LastOfHerKind last of the royal family]] around, and the plan required access to the Founding Titan's powers ''and'' a royal family member, this would mean that she would have to have children as soon as possible [[spoiler:because she was going to eat Zeke, who was [[YourDaysAreNumbered approaching his 13-year limit]], then be used to keep the people of Marley away with the threat of the Rumbling for another 13 years, before her descendants would repeat the cycle]]. There was talk about trying to find a way to ''prevent'' Historia from being needed as this trope, but the eventual TimeSkip showed that it didn't work and she was currently pregnant, resigned to take on this role.

* The concept of 'let's specifically reward women for having kids' is becoming more and more common in those countries where the fertility rate has fallen close to or below the replacement level (2.1 kids per couple). Russia, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Italy, Germany and Poland outright 'give' stuff to couples who have children (Singapore increases the amount paid per child- $3,000 for having one kid, $18,000 for having a third). Sweden's very generous parental leaves and stem in part from the concept of, "If we make having kids easier, there will be MORE of them!" Results are mixed, but Russia had population growth in 2009 for the first time in fifteen years. The biggest argument against this method is that it encourages citizens from overpopulated countries such as India and China to immigrate to any one of these nations for their benefits and have as many children as they want.

** Marie Louise's own great-grandmother was Empress Maria Theresa, the only Holy Roman Empress. Being an only child in a family whose lack of heirs just caused the War of Spanish Succession, her father spent much of his reign on the Pragmatic Sanction to allow her to rule. Yet, she was still expected to be a figurehead for her husband and eventual children, with her intended to continue the dynasty as a baby factory. Marie Louise agreed to let a male successor replace her reign when one appeared, and proceeded to bear 16 children, 12 whom survived to adulthood, and help greatly replenish the dynasty. She also [["BadassPregnant":reigned while bearing those 16 children across 2 wars]] as an Absolute Monarch who prevented the Empire from falling apart. Her husband was reduced to a prince-consort, who had an unknown number of additional illegitimate children due to his many affairs.

* The Code of Hammurabi stated that if a wife was not able to bear children, she was to have her husband sleep with one of her slaves or servants, who would then bear the child on her behalf.

* In ''Literature/BeyondTheImpossible'', Demeter sets up “breeding camps” on planet Myridia to supply her army with new soldiers. Healthy women are chained and give birth in captivity, while sick or sterile are killed.

* The concept of 'let's specifically reward women for having kids' is becoming more and more common in those countries where the fertility rate has fallen close to or below the replacement level (2.1 kids per couple). Russia, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, France, Italy, Germany and Poland outright 'give' stuff to couples who have children (Singapore increases the amount paid per child- $3,000 for having one kid, $18,000 for having a third). Sweden's very generous parental leaves and stem in part from the concept of, "If we make having kids easier, there will be MORE of them!" Results are mixed, but Russia had population 'growth' in 2009 for the first time in fifteen years. The biggest argument against this method is that it encourages citizens from overpopulated countries such as India and China to immigrate to any one of these nations for their benefits and have as many children as they want.

* ''Comicbook/InnocenceLost'': Dr. Sarah Kinney is forced to become one by Zander Rice when she disobeys her superiors' orders by attempting to create a female clone of ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}. When she successfully creates the female embryo, Rice forces ''her'' to act as the surrogate. Nine months later, Comicbook/{{X 23}} is born.

* In ''Literature/CaptainFrenchOrTheQuestForParadise'', a strange consequence of PopulationControl on many developed worlds (plus everyone being TheAgeless) is the appearance of a type of women the titular protagonist calls "frantic mothers". These women have their maternal instinct dialed UpToEleven, and they believe themselves to be wholly this trope. They are frequently the ones lobbying the governments to build colony ships and settle faraway planets. Eventually, governments give in and finance the costly undertaking, just to be rid of women like that. Many space traders (usually males) may also agree to transport groups of "frantic mothers" to young colonies, and the women are more than willing to pay for passage with sex, although they get testy if the space trader in question is sterile (perfectly reversible in this setting), ignoring the explanations of the problems of having a child in low gravity. While French dislikes such women, he does agree that they are a good reason why humanity has settled thousands of planets.

* In ''Franchise/MassEffect'', the Krogan can reproduce thousands of children very quickly. While among galactic society, they are the [[ProudWarriorRace biggest, toughest and most aggressive species there is]], on their homeworld [[DeathWorld Tuchanka]], they were basically the equivalent of rabbits. It becomes a plot point in the entire series regarding the [[SterilityPlague genophage]]. Once taken out of the hostile environment of Tuchanka and colonizing garden worlds, the birth rate went out of control and they started aggressively colonizing other species' worlds, kicking off the Krogan rebellions. The genophage was deployed to put an end to it. If Shepard cures the Krogan of it, Wrex boasts he'd be surprised how fast the females can churn them out. If Eve is alive, she'll tartly correct Wrex and let Shepard know that the galaxy doesn't have to worry about another Krogan rebellion.

* This is the big twist revealed at the end of ''Literature/{{Borrasca}}''. [[spoiler:As a result of iron ore leaking out into the town of Drisking's water table after the town's mines were blown up, most of the people became infertile. As a result, the people running the baby farm, which is called Borrasca, came up with the solution to kidnap fertile women and girls to impregnate and then sell the babies to the infertile townspeople so they could raise families again. This is the town of Drisking's [[TownWithADarkSecret dark secret]] that has been going on for decades by the time the story begins, and when the women become too sick or old to bear healthy children, they are put through an ore refinery (called the Shiny Gentleman) in order to dispose of them]].

** In a number of insect species, adults of one or both sexes have significantly reduced anatomy; their sole purpose at that phase is to mate, produce offspring (if female), and then die, usually immediately afterward. This is taken UpToEleven by bagworm moths, where females are almost literally egg sacs, with no eyes, legs, wings, or a digestive tract; the males simply mate with them, the females lay their eggs, and they die (in fact, some species don't even lay the eggs; the young have to emerge from their mothers' corpse).

** The concerns about non-natives benefitting from incentives to have more children can be addressed by simply restricting said incentives to native people. The problem with that solution is that it could violate anti-racial dsicrimination laws in some contries.

** The concerns about non-natives benefitting from incentives to have more children can be addressed by somply restricting said incentives to native people. The problem with that solution is that it could violate anti-racial dsicrimination laws in some contries.

* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'': Played with. In order to increase the number of children with the Bloodline trait, and increase the number of mutants in their families overall, the Bloodline set up a PeopleFarm project aboard the airship ''Jules Verne''... but instead of kidnapping women for the breeding program, they hire Exemplar women between the ages of 18 and 25 as surrogate mothers, paying them well and covering all of their medical expenses (there is even talk of offering college scholarships), and they only stay at the facility until their child is born (they only contract to have a single child). The children are then fostered to Bloodline members and given the best treatment and education available. While the protagonists still find the idea repulsive (understandably so, especially given [[StalkerWithATestTube how Envy first found out about the place]]), the women they talk to insist it was a good deal for them, as they were generally in desperate financial straits before the offer came along, the facilities at the Baby Farm are lavish, and the pay is excellent.
* This is the big twist revealed at the end of [[spoiler: ''{{Literature/Borrasca}}''. As a result of iron ore leaking out into the town of Drisking's water table after the town's mines were blown up, most of the people became infertile. As a result, the people running the baby farm, which is called Borrasca, came up with the solution to kidnap fertile women and girls to impregnate and then sell the babies to the infertile townspeople so they could raise families again. This is the town of Drisking's [[TownWithADarkSecret dark secret]] that has been going on for decades by the time the story begins, and when the women become too sick or old to bear healthy children, they are put through an ore refinery (called the Shiny Gentleman) in order to dispose of them]].

->'''Claremont''': Now, if that had been the point David [Michelinie] was trying to make, that these other Avengers are [[SuperDickery callous boors]], okay then, I may disagree with the point, but if he followed through on it, it would have made sense. But it seemed to me, looking at the story, looking at the following story, that he was going for: “This is how you respond to a pregnancy.”

\\
Creator/ChrisClaremont explicitly called out the company’s editors for their handling of the whole affair, both in having [[https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/779496.html#cutid1 Carol herself call it out]] in ''Avengers Annual #10'' and in ''The X-Men Companion II''. This issue effectively killed Marcus' character as the company hurried to distance themselves from the nonsensical storyline.

--> '''Pema:''' All I want is one child like me, a nice nonbender who doesn’t blast wind in my face every five seconds.

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[[folder: Real Life]]

* [[http://www.pikminwiki.com/Red_Bulborb Bulborbs]], common enemies in ''{{VideoGame/Pikmin}}'', are not ''people'', but they still amble around after food, nap during the day, and are dangerous and energetic at night. Except for the [[http://www.pikminwiki.com/Empress_Bulblax Empress Bulblaxes]], which have enormously distended abdomens so swollen that their feet don't touch the ground. Unlike every other Bulborb, rather than chasing and biting attackers she can only roll and thrash and continuously give birth. This is not the natural state of female Bulborbs - it happens to the largest one in a given range in response to environmental changes - like, perhaps, Pikmin-sized Captains showing up and making the food do weird things.

* The horror manga ''Starving Anonymous'' decided to apply the logic of industrial livestock farming to human beings (since its story is about aliens raising humans as cattle), including in the breeding domain. The protagonists enter the "breeding area" of one of those human farms, and it is not a pleasant picture at all. All the "breeders" are kept in cages and naked, like animals. On one side men that several years of pure steroids and lust-inducing drugs turned into mindless brutes and sex-obsessed rapists. On the other women that were raped so many times and bore so many children through the years their bodies became distorted and their mind were completely broken. One of them is seen unable to let go of the rotting remains of her latest baby, that died at birth. And the worst part is that all of these descriptions were directly taken from the RealLife fate of animals in intensive farming industires.

* In ''[[ComicBook/TheAvengers Avengers #199]]'' (written by David Michelinie), when ComicBook/CarolDanvers is introduced to the Avengers, we're told that she has become eight months pregnant by an unknown father, or by some unknown force. In issue #200 we get the baby delivery as well as Marcus Immortus (son of Kang the Conqueror and Revelation) admitting he'd kidnapped Ms. Marvel and tried wooing her with expensive clothes, serenading her with history's best musicians, etc. But apparently she hadn't been won over because he says, "with a boost" from his father's "mind machines", Ms. Marvel finally gave in. The reaction of the entire team is to throw a baby shower. (Err?)

* A rare voluntary and one-off example occurs with ComicBook/LadyShiva. She allowed herself to be impregnated solely as a business transaction, to provide a test subject for the child's father, and gave up [[ComicBook/Batgirl2000 the girl]] immediately after she gave birth, not meeting the girl again for another seventeen years.