Why are Indian families shrinking?

As one of four siblings, fashion designer Anjana Bhargav can’t remember a time when her house wasn’t "full of people". "My two sisters and brother were always fighting over who got to sit on the ‘favourite dining table chair’," she recalls. “There was always food being cooked for our family of six, and I, as the oldest, was frequently pulled away from my favourite hobby of reading fashion magazines to referee fights between the others.”

Her husband Atul Bhargav, president, New Delhi Trader’s Association, who also has two sisters and a brother, had much the same kind of upbringing. But now that they are a couple, Anjana and Atul’s decision to have just one child has ensured that their daughter Ankita will have a very different life. “She didn’t have to fight for our attention, or share her room,” says Anjana.

And baby makes three
It’s not just the Bhargavs, many other middle class and upper middle class urban couples across India, just like the rest of the world, are choosing to have just one child. “A shift in attitude is taking place and the number of people having one child is on the increase,” says Shireen Jejeebhoy, senior associate, Population Council.

Dr Kaushiki Dwivedee, senior consultant obstetrician and gynecologist, unit head, Max Hospital, Gurgaon, explains, “Forty-five per cent of the women who come to me, who are in their late 30s, have just one child. In fact, lots of younger women too have one child. But I am not counting them since they could still be making up their minds.”

The one-child family is fast moving toward becoming the norm in urban circles. Susan Newman, a social psychologist at Rutgers University, USA, and author of Parenting an Only Child, says, “I actually call the only child the new traditional family. This generation is witnessing the drastic downsizing of the family structure.”

So, there may be a time very soon when the government’s famous family planning slogan – Hum Do Hamare Do – could soon become Hum Do Hamara Ek. Consider these statistics: According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the percentage of ever married women who want 0, 1 or 2 children has increased from 40 per cent in 1992-93 to 65 per cent in 2005-06.

Says Shireen Jejeebhoy, “That’s a great leap. Also, if you examine the statistics of ever married women who want a single child, that number has increased from 3 per cent in 1992-93, to 5 per cent in 1998-99, to 7 per cent in 2005-6.” She adds that the figure should be more because there are more women who do not want more than one child, but do not have access to or do not practice contraception. “This is termed ‘unmet need’,” says Jejeebhoy, adding that 10 per cent of women in urban areas have accidental and unplanned pregnancies.

Under pressure
There are many reasons why couples are choosing to restrict the size of their families. Sometimes, the decision comes about because of a series of constraints. Kathak dancer Shovana Narayan (who has three siblings), and her diplomat husband Dr Herbert Traxl (who has two), chose to have just one child – 24-year-old Irwin Ishan – for “purely practical reasons”. Says Narayan, “ I was very busy with my career. And there were long stretches in our marriage when my husband and I were on separate continents. That isn’t the best way to bring up children.” Dr Traxl agrees: “Our lifestyle didn’t allow us the choice to have more kids.”

Dr Kiran Bedi, India’s first and highest ranking woman officer in the Indian Police Service, also chose to have just one child, despite coming from a family of six, because she was a working mother with a high-pressure job who still wanted to do justice to her child. Her daughter Saina also has just one child.

Still other couples make their decision since they feel they cannot afford to have more than one child. Says 32-year-old homemaker Swati Mahendra, “My husband is the only earning member of our family. We can manage quite well now that our daughter Aastha is just two years old. But we know that very soon, our expenses will only rise once she begins school.” She adds, “We want to give her the best education and lifestyle, and we know we can only do that if we have one child. That’s why we haven’t considered having another baby.”