Ive Seen People Say: Why Do People In The Districts Have Children? - Tumblr Posts

I’ve seen people talk about the tesserae system and how exploitative it is, how it strengthens class divide, how it targets the lower class, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone discuss that it’s actively a reward for having children.

Same as how women were given a small amount of money and rewards for each child they had in fascist Germany, the tesserae system works to exploit people’s desperation to have more children. Again, it enforces the hope in the hunger games; especially in the larger districts, it can be seen as a reward for very little risk.

It makes participation in Hunger Games (and thus the act having children itself) become an active job - a responsibility for which families are rewarded. This is especially interesting because we do not know much about the treatment of women, but it definitely shows how Panem was at least built on a misogynistic society, if it isn’t actively Patriarchal itself, because it implies that women are treated as little more than mothers when having children is a viable source of food for a while.

And that then exacerbates class warfare. It turns the lower classes on the middle classes, as they are not so desperate as to risk losing a child just to survive.

It’s implied in Mockingjay that the human race was on the brink of extinction in Panem, so rewarding people for having kids was very likely a way to combat humanity’s dwindling numbers.