‘You must keep your priorities straight,’ a top human resources executive once told me.7
‘And which are?’
‘Your priority is your baby. In the last two months before your delivery, you should stop working. There is nothing much to do at work anyway. Budgets have been squeezed as well.’
‘Of course not. I am in good health, and I will work till the end of my pregnancy.’
‘No, it will not be possible for us to allow that. I have consulted all our colleagues and we think it is best for you to rest and return only after six months or so.’
‘Six months! That is for me to decide, isn’t it?’ I asked, rolling my eyes at this judgement passed by the company’s all-male top management. ‘What about maternity? Will these six months be paid?’
‘No. You can avail the medical insurance provided by the company. We have a very good insurance package that will cover a lot of the medical costs,’ he said.
The beginning of the journey of parenthood is often scarred by stereotypes based on the personal beliefs of doctors, entertainment providers and employers, who would usually be expected to abide by science, fact and law. But in India, this is not always the case. For example, I later discovered that my gynaecologist had mixed old granny tales of abstinence from papaya and pineapple into her medical beliefs. Regular exercise and a healthy sex life, I later learnt, are beneficial during pregnancy. My unborn baby and I travelled to six countries and there was no problem. All this makes me wonder how many pregnant women in India are grounded by the agents of society, their health ruined by lack of activity, spirits dampened by clichés, and their careers written off by narrow-minded employers who wrongly undermine their capabilities. If they do not give in to these pressures, they are made to feel terribly guilty about being bad parents.
The demonization of selfishness continues to be inflicted on parents even after their baby is born. Parents who cannot afford to provide the best material facilities for their child are made to feel that they have been egoistic and not sacrificed enough. On the other hand, young couples who are both working hard to earn a livelihood in the 24/7 corporate work culture in India are shamed for being ‘absent parents’.
Divorced parents face the social stigma of choosing their own happiness over that of their children, who are assumed to derive a benefit from the presence of quarrelling parents. In contrast, as I pointed out earlier, parents who make great sacrifices of their own happiness, for the education or careers or well-being of their children, are considered by society to be morally superior to those who have not done so. Often, this is despite the tendency of the sacrificing parent to suffer a deep sense of resentment. Such a parent might hope that the child would make sacrifices for the parent’s benefit as well, making it akin to a burden.
These ethical parenting conflicts are common in India’s urban pockets as well as in the sixteen-million-strong Indian diaspora, where parents struggle to build a life in a new environment as well as raise a family. The majority of Indians—68 per cent of our population, or 833 million people—who live in villages, have other additional issues.
In rural India, a farmer who needs more male hands for farm work might have his infant daughter killed as she is perceived as useless while he seeks to pursue the economic stability of the family. Female infanticide has been banned since 18708 in parts of the subcontinent, but it persists in many corners of our country even today. One of the major reasons it occurs is the uneven allocation of resources (not always the lack of them).9 Limited resources are often distributed unevenly, and so within poor households, the least-advantaged person, often the girl child, is likely to suffer the most from shortfalls and incomplete protection. And so, even if she is allowed to live, the daughter is still likely to be treated as a burden because her eventual marriage will involve dowry and gifts demanded by the groom’s family. She is not considered much help on the work front anyway.
Meanwhile, it is common to hear in public conversations among the educated lot in India that a daughter is a great liability for the parents, which ends only when the daughter gets married. The socio-economic context is such that this is said without hesitation, and often as a gesture of parental love for daughters. This attitude is ultimately echoed in contemporary Indian films, popular television shows and literature. It is a dangerous chicken-and-egg situation that produces a highly regressive attitude towards the girl child who is perceived to have little to do in improving her own condition or that of her parents, and is therefore considered better off married and gone.
The attitude is so pervasive that girls are married off dangerously young across the country. Currently, 320,000 girls below the age of fifteen in India are married, and have already given birth to two children—an alarming increase of 88 per cent from 2001. Further, 280,000 married girls in the age group of fifteen to nineteen have already given birth to four children, which is also an increase of 65 per cent from 170,000 in 2001.10
This trend is not symptomatic of only parental neglect or aversion—it is also a consequence of the persistently degrading socio-economic scenario in India. While the GDP was soaring, 82 per cent of rural India still lacked basic amenities in 2010, and 240 million Indians do not have access to basic electricity even in 2017.11 Moreover, the presence of television and other media have made them aware of what they are not privileged enough to possess. Therefore, if undue parental pressure, female infanticide, regarding a daughter’s education inferior to a son’s12 and early marriage are considered actions taken by desperate parents to improve their socio-economic condition, we can agree that the only way to
