May 13, 2025
KOLKATA – Every year, on the second Sunday of May, social media timelines overflow with images of smiling mothers and doting children. Glossy advertisements sell flowers, jewellery and spa vouchers, urging us to ‘spoil mom’ for all she does. However, in this flurry of saccharine sentimentality, we forget to ask a fundamental, uncomfortable question: in India, who gets to choose motherhood, and who doesn’t? Is it a privilege shaped by class?
In an urban, upper-middle-class apartment in Kolkata, 33-year-old Shruti (name changed), a senior communications professional, speaks candidly about her decision to remain child-free. “I love children, but I’ve never felt the urge to have one of my own. I travel, I work long hours, and frankly, I enjoy the freedom. Thankfully, my family respects my choice.” Shruti belongs to a growing number of urban, educated women for whom motherhood is no longer an inevitability, but an option.
But travel just 40 kilometres from the city to the interiors of South 24 Parganas, and you’ll meet Rekha (name changed), a 27-year-old mother of three, married at 19. Her third pregnancy was neither planned nor desired. “My mother-in-law wanted a grandson. When I tried to protest, she said, ‘How will I face society if you can’t bear me a son?’” Such sentiments are often casually voiced in countless Indian homes, stubbornly ignoring that it’s the father’s chromosomes, not the mother’s, that decide a baby’s sex. Rekha’s access to contraception is limited, both by availability and by deeply entrenched social norms. The nearest pharmacy often runs out of stock, and even when options are available, decisions about family planning rarely rest with women like her.
This is the inconvenient reality behind the idealisation of motherhood: while for some it is a celebrated, self-authored journey, for many it remains a social imposition — a duty performed without agency. Motherhood, in India, is not a neutral experience. It is shaped, dictated and constrained by class, caste and economic privilege. The very act of becoming a mother — or choosing not to — is a decision unevenly distributed along socio-economic lines. And this gulf is not just philosophical — it’s material, with consequences measured in lost livelihoods, denied healthcare, unsafe abortions and premature deaths.
The language of choice and its limits
In India’s metropolitan cities, within upwardly mobile circles, conversations around motherhood have undergone a quiet shift. It is no longer a biological inevitability or a moral obligation. Increasingly, women are choosing to delay, decline or carefully plan motherhood based on career trajectories, financial readiness or personal inclination.
Corporate India has responded, albeit unevenly. Maternity leave policies, IVF loans, egg-freezing options and work-from-home privileges have emerged as competitive benefits in some urban workplaces. Single motherhood, though still rare, no longer invites the scandal it once did in elite circles.
But this evolving language of ‘choice’ is largely confined to those with class privilege. And the numbers prove it.
According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) (2019-21), while modern contraceptive use among married women has increased nationally, the unmet need for family planning still stands at 9.4 per cent overall, rising to around 10 per cent in rural areas. This translates to millions of women who continue to have little say in whether and when they become mothers. Even where contraceptive options exist, patriarchal family structures often place these decisions firmly in the hands of husbands, mothers-in-law, or male elders.
The gendered burden of family planning is stark: female sterilisation accounts for 37.9 per cent of contraceptive use, while male sterilisation languishes at a mere 0.3 per cent — a legacy of decades of coercive, state-led population control policies that targeted women, particularly from Dalit, Adivasi, economically weaker sections and other marginalised and/or minority communities.
Data points to be noted
Travel outside urban enclaves, and the promise of choice fades quickly. In rural India, small towns and urban informal settlements, motherhood continues to arrive early, frequently, and without consent.
The numbers are sobering. 23.3 per cent of Indian women aged 20–24 were married before the legal age of 18, as per NFHS-5. In states like West Bengal, that figure jumps to 41.6 per cent. Meanwhile, 6.8 per cent of women aged 15–19 were already mothers or pregnant at the time of the survey — with the highest rates in states like West Bengal (16.4 per cent) and Jharkhand (12.9 per cent).
Such early pregnancies come at the cost of education, financial independence and long-term health, often locking young women into cycles of dependency and poverty.
Unsafe abortions, illegal clinics and unreported maternal deaths remain grim realities. While abortion is legal in India up to 24 weeks under certain conditions, The Lancet Global Health (2020) study found that of the estimated 15.6 million abortions occurring annually, only 22 per cent are performed in health facilities. The rest happen at home (73 per cent) or in unsafe, informal settings (5 per cent) — a statistic that reveals the alarming lack of access to safe, affordable reproductive healthcare.
The hidden cost of women’s labour
Pregnant women labourers in India often work under extreme conditions, particularly in high-heat environments, which significantly increases the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriages. A study conducted in Tamil Nadu involving 800 pregnant women engaged in moderate to heavy physical work found that those exposed to occupational heat stress had a doubled risk of miscarriage compared to those not exposed. Specifically, the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for miscarriage among heat-exposed women was 2.4, indicating a significant association between heat exposure and increased miscarriage risk.
The physiological mechanisms underlying this increased risk include elevated core body temperatures and dehydration, which can lead to reduced blood flow to the placenta, thereby compromising fetal development. Additionally, the body’s efforts to dissipate heat during high-temperature conditions can divert blood flow away from the uterus, further exacerbating risks to the fetus.
Despite the existence of legal protections under the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, which entitles women to 26 weeks of paid maternity leave and six weeks of paid leave following a miscarriage, implementation remains inconsistent, particularly in the informal sector where many labourers are employed. This lack of enforcement means that many pregnant women continue to work in hazardous conditions without adequate support or accommodations, increasing the likelihood of adverse outcomes.
Motherhood as an economic hazard
Motherhood is not just a private experience; it is an economic hazard for millions of Indian women. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (2022-23), over 80 per cent of Indian working women are employed in the informal sector — as domestic workers, agricultural/masonry labourers, street vendors or factory workers.
These women have no maternity leave, job security or health benefits. Pregnancy often means job loss. Domestic workers, numbering an estimated 4.75 million, routinely report being dismissed when visibly pregnant or shortly after childbirth, as per the National Domestic Workers Movement.
Purnima (name changed), a 35-year-old domestic worker in Howrah, lost two jobs after becoming pregnant with her second child. “The madams don’t like to hire pregnant women,” she says. There was no maternity leave, no paid time off. After the baby was born, the responsibility of childcare fell entirely on Purnima, with no one else to step in if she left the house. Her earnings dwindled, pushing the family deeper into poverty.
Compare this to urban professionals who enjoy maternity benefits, work-from-home options and subsidised daycare services. The disparity isn’t merely about income — it’s about safety, dignity and control over one’s body and future.
The mainstream blind spot
Mainstream narratives, especially those amplified in urban forums, have often focused on celebrating delayed motherhood, single parenting by choice, or opting out of motherhood entirely. While these conversations are vital, the lived realities of working-class and marginalised women have often been ignored, for whom the debate isn’t about freedom, but survival.
The State’s role in controlling motherhood
India’s family planning policies have historically reflected anxieties of population control rather than reproductive justice. From the forced sterilisation drives of the 1970s to contemporary cash incentives for vasectomies and tubectomies, state interventions have disproportionately targeted economically weaker women.
Even today, more than 60 per cent of sterilisation procedures are performed on women, despite male sterilisation being simpler, safer and less invasive. And this is not simply a cultural quirk — it reflects deeply entrenched patriarchal norms and a systemic bias in public health policy.
The maternal mortality divide
While India’s Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) has improved, dropping to 97 per 1,00,000 live births (SRS 2020), the disparities are glaring: Kerala: 19, Assam: 195 and Uttar Pradesh: 167.
Most maternal deaths occur among women aged 20–29 years, disproportionately affecting Dalit, Adivasi and minority/marginalised women in states with weak healthcare systems and poor antenatal care coverage.
NFHS-5 also found that only 44.4 per cent of rural pregnant women received full antenatal care (minimum four visits, a tetanus shot and iron-folic acid for 100 days) — revealing how fragile maternal healthcare remains outside India’s cities.
The right to refuse
As Mother’s Day approaches, sentimental messages and commercial campaigns will once again flood public spaces, glorifying the self-sacrificing Indian mother. But perhaps it’s time to complicate that narrative.
Motherhood deserves to be celebrated — but it must also be interrogated. Until every woman, irrespective of class, caste and geography, has both the uncoerced right to say yes and the unpunished right to say no, the motherhood we so easily romanticise will remain a privilege masquerading as a universal experience.
And perhaps the most radical thing we can do this Mother’s Day is to ask not how well mothers sacrifice, but how free they were to choose the life they lead.