Duncan Ackerman

Dia5177
TA: Alex
India Essay
9/22/2013



Throughout the history of Indian culture, sons have been preferred over
daughters when couples decide to have families. This tendency has many
demographic implications, including the promotion of high fertility in India. Couples
are not guaranteed a son when they decide to procreate. Often couples will have to
have multiple children before they produce a son. In many instances, Indian couples
will keep having children until they have at least one son. This leads to higher
fertility rates.
Sons are preferred over daughters in India mainly because cultural customs
say that the son must light the funeral pyre when the parents die. They believe that,
in order to attain the heavenly state of Moksha, only the son must light the funeral
fires. Sons are also preferred in Indian culture because males are considered to be
the heads of their respective households. A male will provide families with greater
economic value than a female would. Men are more likely to get jobs and become
wealthy than females are. Also, much of the Indian population live in rural areas
where farming and manual labor are very common ways of making a living. Males
are more physically able to do these types of jobs than females, so are in higher
demand when it comes to performing tasks like planting fields and tending to crops.
Since the 1950s, Indias TFR has dropped from 6 to around 2.7. In my
opinion, many factors, both cultural and economic played a part in this drop. First, I
think that the increasing use of contraceptives has played a major role in the TFR
decrease. As contraceptives become easier to use, and their use becomes more
socially acceptable, they definitely begin to play a major role in fertility control.
Second, I believe that post-conception pregnancy technologies like amniocentesis
and abortion surgeries play a major role in fertility control as well. As stated before,
the desire for a male child has a tendency to increase fertility, but now that couples
can find out what the sex of the child is before birth, they can decide to abort it
instead of being forced raise the unwanted child. Third, I believe that the gender
imbalance contributes to the fertility drop. Since the male population in India now
far exceeds the female population, only a certain number of males will ever be able
to reproduce. If the ratio of male to female was more balanced, many more children
would be born and each male would likely be able to have his own offspring instead
of competing for the few females that are left. The fourth aspect that I believe has
contributed to Indias huge TFR drop is the urbanization of much of its populace.
Many people who once lived in the rural areas of India have now moved to the cities
to find manufacturing and office jobs. They no longer need large families to keep up
with farm work. Also, there is not as much room in the cities to raise large families,
so couples have to make due with the amount of space that they have. The last
aspect of modern Indian life that I think had an impact on the TFR drop is the overall
standard of living increase that the country has seen. As we learned in lecture, as
standard of living goes up, total fertility goes down. The entire world has
modernized quite a bit in the last fifty years, India included, and with that increase
in standard of living and technology, TFR has obeyed that rule and shrunk quite a
bit.