Patriarchy and high fertility in rural north India.

This paper attempts to find a more detailed understanding of how patriarchy contributes to the persistence of high fertility in a region where traditional gender relations remain relatively intact--in rural South Asia in general and rural North India in particular. The authors identify as the key aspect its fostering a system of stratification on the basis of sex which places severe constraints on the activities and roles of women. While the discussion based on a variety of data sources emphasizes the effects of patriarchy on the status of women the authors recognize that patriarchal systems also have important implications for the reproductive behavior of males. In particular the enhanced economic and social value of sons and the corresponding reduced value of daughters can be seen to generate strong preferences for sons and for high fertility among males as well. Empirical evidence has been presented to support the hypotheses that patriarchy promotes high fertility by providing special incentives among women for bearing a premium number of sons and by maintaining a system of familial decision-making which relegates women to a subordinate position in areas such as their own reproduction for much of their married life. These 2 consequences need not operate in complementary fashion nor uniformly lead to higher fertility. As examples from the case studies illustrate husbands holding less pronatalist reproductive views than their wives may also possess sufficient authority to either use contraception themselves or to compel their wives to do so. More commonly however patriarchy can be seen to engender sufficiently high reproductive goals among women so as to preclude the need for the use of contraception. Among those women who do reach or exceed their reproductive goals patriarchy can be seen to encourage or facilitate high fertility by deterring innovative behavior by wives such as that required to adopt contraception or through the acquiring of wives to other family members who are less favorably disposed to the idea of fertility limitation.