The aim of this paper is to discuss how in the wider context of capital expansion and accumulation in the late twentieth century development initiatives in general, and family planning in particular, have helped to train and produce new bodies and selves.Development projects are primarily geared toward changing the traditional practices and habits of the people in the developing world, in order to help them make the transition to lifestyles of the globalizing model of the West. The “West” here is used as a historical term rather than a geographical construct. It is, as Akhil Gupta (1997:321) argues, a conjugation of place, power, and knowledge (Gupta 1997:321) that has historically imposed its rationalities onto other societies. Using the Egyptian case as an example, I argue that family planning programs do not just reduce the number of children and regulate reproduction; they also introduce or foster notions of individual choice and responsibility, risk aversion, and personal independence. In short, they help to construct a new kind of individuality which is guided by legal constructs of citizenship rather than by communitarian and familial control. Such a construction must be further situated within the global political economy that reorganizes markets and labor relations, and subsequently requires individuals to abstractly self-regulate themselves and respond to the pressures of want and self-interest (Scott 1995:211).