Indian parents’ fear of their inability to find a suitable groom for their daughters along with the societal pressure to pay huge sum of dowry adds to the feeling of the girl child being a ‘burden’, says a UN report released on Tuesday.
“The unintended consequences of contemporary social processes, when combined with parental fears of the unattached sexuality of adult daughters in a context of a highly competitive and differentiated marriage market, are compounding the sense of burden represented by the birth of a daughter.”
She now requires many more years at home with higher investments in nutrition, health and education... Sons, on the other hand, embody a range of ritual andeconomic roles.
If the current climate of economic volatility and masculine anomie makes them often fall short of expectations, nonetheless at least one is essential for the future of the family.
It is this conjuncture that is producing the falling Child Sex Ratio (CSR),” according to the report ‘Sex Ratios and Gender Biased Sex Selection: History, Debates and Future Directions’.
The report explores the various aspects which compounds the problem of declining child sex ratio that India is grappling with despite being one of the fastest growing economies in the world.