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TWO SONS AND A DAUGHTER: SEX COMPOSITION AND WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE BEHAVIOUR IN MADHYA PRADESH, INDIA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2012

JEFFREY EDMEADES ,
ROHINI PANDE ,
KERRY MACQUARRIE ,
TINA FALLE  and
ANJU MALHOTRA
JEFFREY EDMEADES
Affiliation:
International Center for Research on Women, Washington, DC, USA
ROHINI PANDE
Affiliation:
Independent Consultant, Washington, DC, USA
KERRY MACQUARRIE
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
TINA FALLE
Affiliation:
Independent Consultant, Velden, Austria
ANJU MALHOTRA
Affiliation:
Gender and Human Rights, UNICEF NYHQ, New York, USA
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Summary

This article examines how the sex composition of women's current children at the start of a pregnancy interval influences both fertility desires and the full range of reproductive actions women may take to realize them, including temporary contraception, abortion and sterilization, in Madhya Pradesh, India, where popular notions of ideal family size and sex composition are dominated by son preference. The analysis is conducted using a dataset of 9127 individual pregnancy intervals from a 2002 statewide representative survey of 2444 women aged 15–39 with at least one child. The results indicate that women's preferences go beyond a singular preference for male children, with the preferred composition of children being two boys and one girl. Women with this composition are 90% less likely to report having wanted another pregnancy (OR 0.097, p<0.01) relative to those with two girls. These preferences have significant implications for reproductive actions. While sex composition has no statistically significant effect on the use of temporary contraception, those with the preferred sex composition are twice as likely to attempt abortion (OR 2.436, p<0.01) and twelve times more likely to be sterilized (OR 12.297, p<0.01) relative to those with two girls only.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 44 , Issue 6 , November 2012 , pp. 749 - 764
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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