As Indian couples increasingly choose to go childfree, premarital counselling must be extended to their families

In 2010, Perumal Murugan, an author from Tiruchengode, Tamil Nadu, wrote about the desperate fate of childless couples. His book was banned because of a controversial ritual that Murugan had said, he discovered in the annals of background research. The festival detailed in Madhorubagan or ‘One Part Woman,’ condones extramarital sex to ‘bless’ the childless. This ritual harkened the undoing of the protagonists Ponna and her husband Kali’s marriage, and later, the author’s literary suicide. For if Ponna returns pregnant, it confirms that Kali is impotent. If she does not return pregnant, she must shoulder all the blame. At every possible juncture, we are reminded, “The wretched people around us do not see what a man has. They only see what a man doesn’t have.” And the plot unfolds as a quest to see how far a man will go in order to belong. Despite the nascent state of sex education and mental health awareness in the country, young adults in India are starting to assert that marriage and children are a choice, and not an expectation. The word ‘childless’ has been substituted with ‘childfree,’ recognising that choice. “The internet is a limitless supply of knowledge, good or bad, and that has made people fiercely independent. We don’t need to rely on others in person for information, everything is at our fingertips. At the same time, we ingest information about the entire planet on a daily basis. Twenty years ago, someone my age would only be concerned about their colleagues, friends, and family. Today, I am concerned about the dying ecosystems, and how my mindless consumption is creating multi-faceted problems all around the globe,” says Ashwin, an IT professional in his late 20s, who in consensus with his wife, has decided to forgo biological children. “My wife and I are both strongly of the opinion that biological kids are not what the world needs right now, nor is the world fit to bring new kids into,” he adds. For him, convincing his parents of this decision is more of an ongoing battle. On Reddit, Quora, and discord, there is a special space of venting reserved for the parents and relatives of childfree adults. “Literally, every reason that boomers give for having kids is transactional and selfish. They will take care of you when you are old, they will fix your marriage,” says a user on the anti-natalism thread. “Like no, your child won’t become the next billionaire. He will grow up in a low-income household with tremendously shitty opportunities,” says another. Arguments espousing the ‘hum do, humaare do’ attitude usually range from addressing a biological need, and avoiding pain and suffering in the future in case one is to change their mind. Ashwin is confident he will get his way eventually, and his parents will just have to make peace with the couple’s decision. But for others, it could go either way. Under the aegis of society where everything from nation-building, bequeathing property to last rites and salvation hang on one’s progeny, the decision to not have children is seen as selfish. The expert view on the family unit always professed that the joint family system was on the decline. Yet there is little evidence to support this claim. Increased life expectancy, property control, and participation in family businesses have turned joint families into something of a mainstay of the culture.     [caption id=“attachment_10076351” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Representational image[/caption] Good children listen to their elders. Think back to the shocking Asiana air plane crash and ‘outlier’ Malcolm Gladwell’s cockpit theory, where a whole plane went down because a co-pilot felt the overwhelming need to be deferential toward his senior. Rather than a minor issue of overly concerned but ultimately well-meaning relatives, who one might gently refuse, the pressure to go childfree points to a larger, individual versus group think clash.  And though family intervention should and would apply to more scenarios than just the period before marriage, marriage continues to be a pivot of socially accepted behaviours. The contract of marriage is the very first barrier or milestone of sociocultural relationships in India.       There is a very real social implication to being childfree. People, and women especially, are still considered unlucky, or outsiders, if they do not conform. And in middle-income families, we still see a shift in power dynamics in the house, when a woman becomes a mother to a son. “In Indian culture, the more senior you are, the more you expect to the daughter-in-law to adjust. Often, it’s the families that are not mentally prepared to have the daughter-in-law come into their life. Parents take time to understand why counselling is important. They think that whatever the difficulty is, it can be sorted after marriage, and don’t put enough weightage on achieving clarity on questions of children and housing before hand. Premarital counselling must not only cater to understanding the compatibility of the couple but also be future-oriented. Premarital counselling should enable you to understand and bond with all the people with whom you will be sharing your new life after marriage. One cannot spend the rest of their life in guilt,” says therapist Komal Parekh, who also offers premarital counselling among other services.   The therapy model as it exists, may not be adequate to address the needs of a communal culture like ours. According to therapist Veena Hari, the founder of Bhavati Foundation, an NGO that works on reproductive mental health in India, “The idea that the individual is solely responsible for all mental health outcomes is a Western approach. Maybe that is helpful to a certain degree but when you have a problem that is more systemic – for example, something to do with an institution like marriage – something that is going to affect more than one person, how can you work with one individual and inform that entire set up?” Hari identifies another problem: the existing therapy model burdens the individual. It puts the onus of being well or coping on the individual and not on the system.  

“We feel better communally, and that insight over time is getting lost with individual counselling. Healing is considered to be this isolated thing you do, and you do it yourself but we’re not culturally brought up that way.

I think there are a lot of community activities that can really aid getting the help you need and making sense of the world around you. Even with therapy, if two people come to you, they both narrate a story that is so personal, so subjective, you would not believe that this is the same story, and this is not because one of them is lying or exaggerating. It is because as individuals, this is how we experience reality, depending on our point of view and who we are,” says Hari. A solution comes in the way of a two-way system. “When you’re working with an individual for a family related problem or issue, you get only one narrative whereas there are multiple narratives that need to be taken into account. And obviously the individual is stuck where he is because he cannot see the other points of view, and cannot bring them to their counsellor. This is why it’s so much more important to work with systems. There should be interventions for individuals and systems in alignment,” says Hari. Whether you belong to a virtual and future-facing or an older, tradition-oriented community, which probably does not live on the internet, having children and not having them are both decisions that require social support. As Hari says, “Having or not having children is not just about self esteem, it’s about how it affects our place in the world." Eisha Nair is an independent writer-illustrator based in Mumbai. She has written on history, art, culture, education, and film for various publications. When not pursuing call to cultural critique, she is busy drawing comics.