Modern women and their troubles

“Modern” women are unwilling to marry and if they do, Karnataka Health Minister K Sudhakar is sorry to say, they don’t want to have children or opt for surrogacy to do so. This, he lamented, was the result of “western influences” on society, a “paradigm shift in thinking which is not good”.

Since the minister was making these remarks in the context of a speech on World Mental Health Day, it was widely and embarrassingly circulated on pesky social media. This is obviously not a stand his party would care to endorse. Why, his colleague in Uttar Pradesh had passed family planning rules supposedly aimed at making women more “modern” by having fewer children. And the prime minister has frequently spoken in favour of educating the girl child and promoting women in careers.  

So the clarification came the same day and it was predictable: He was quoted out of context, he said. His remarks, he clarified, were based on a YouGov-Mint-CPR Millennial Survey that showed that among millennials 19 per cent aren’t interested in marriage or children and among post-millennials, the percentage was 23 per cent. These findings, he hastened to add, is “applicable to both boys and girls”.

Okay, but how exactly can these findings be linked to mental health issues, which was the focus of his speech? The minister goes on to explain that he was making the larger point that the traditional “collectivist”-oriented Indian joint family offers greater support systems for people suffering from anxiety, stress and depression than “individualist” western society. He did not, however, offer any data to substantiate the point. Nor is it clear how the choice not to have children — by men or women — can be linked to mental health problems.   

But if we assume he is trying to establish some link between families, children and mental well-being, let’s consider the following. There’s this World Happiness Index that has been in vogue for some years. It may not be an optimum way of judging this deeply subjective attribute on an international scale but it’s as good as any to test the collectivist vs traditionalist argument. The happiest country in the world according to this survey is Finland — a rank that, hilariously, left the Finns themselves gobsmacked.

So how did the Finns come out on top? The survey asks people (in 149 countries) to “value their lives today on a 0 to 10 scale, with the worst possible life as a 0 and the best possible life as a 10”. Since general life satisfaction includes quality of life, access to social infrastructure, personal safety, freedom from oppression and so on, it is no surprise that Finland and most of Scandinavia get top billing (and Afghanistan figured near the bottom). Interestingly, Nordic governments strove to downplay these findings, suggesting that the ranking was somewhat insensitive in ignoring citizens who struggle to evaluate their lives (contrary to common perception, however, suicide rates in Scandinavia are not higher than the OECD average).  
 

The interesting point for the purposes of the mental health-joint family argument is that between 1990 and 2020, this happy country saw a transition in the commonest family type from “married couple with children” to “married couple without children”. As for the Indian subcontinent, where the joint family system is most prevalent, India ranked 149th, Pakistan 105 and Bangladesh 101.  

The notable point about Mr Sudhakar’s statement is that he chose to single out “modern” women. Let’s assume by “modern” he means those who have jobs or careers. He did not appear to link their inclination for no children (according to him) to the weakening support of the joint family. But the rise of nuclear families is a genie that cannot be put back in the bottle — for one reason or another that don’t have much to do with “westernisation”, they account for half the families in India today. In fact, this restructuring of social units does play a significant part in young couples’ decision to not have children. The ability for young parents to rely on the mother, mother-in-law or grandparents to bring up children is rapidly shrinking.

But most of all, if there was a mental health issue related to the child-bearing debate, it is linked to Indian men — and principally their culpable unwillingness to accept responsibility for childcare and rearing (or even looking after elderly parents, for that matter). Working women have long borne the brunt of such inequitable domestic arrangements. The pandemic only enhanced this asymmetry. True, women enjoyed the benefits of work-from-home but they also took on the burden of additional housework and childcare, an activity from which the average Indian male plays truant at the best of times.

So if there is an issue to flag as far as the child-bearing and family-rearing business is concerned, it’s the average Indian male’s mental block when it comes to doing the heavy lifting at home. That’s the message “modern” women would like to hear from politicians.