Dr. Aysha Sana

My partner and I recently marked 10 years of marriage—without children, by choice. What began as a practical plan to delay parenthood to focus on completing our PhDs evolved into a conscious, mutual decision to live childfree.

As a woman and a political scientist, this decision has come with deep reflection. As I keep asking myself what motherhood means to me, I try to make sense of a woman’s ‘desire’ and “responsibility” to be a mother. And as a woman trying to figure out a meaningful or sane life, I’ve wondered at my lack of desire to be a mother, and at the many other things I want my life to hold. And I think about the ideas and structures that define womanhood and family, and the heavy weight of societal expectations that come with them.

There are, of course, constant reminders—from near and dear ones to complete strangers, and from popular culture to secular and religious discourses—that being a mother or parent is the only natural path, and living child-free is not only unacceptable but abnormal, selfish and even foolish.

I have grappled with these questions that are both deeply personal and inherently political. And I’ve often wondered why bearing children so rarely seems to demand much thought. After all, bringing a child into the world and taking responsibility for them surely deserves at least a thought or two.

In recent times, more young people—both men and women—are choosing to be childfree in India. To be childfree and choose an alternative way of life in a culture that is both pro-natal and pro-life means stepping into a challenging and unfamiliar terrain . Unlike men, being a child-free woman is seen as unnatural and even tragic, betraying the ideal of the selfless mother.

In the many social systems where women’s labor—especially reproductive labor—is exploited, women taking charge of their reproductive lives strikes at the very core of that exploitation. Any assertion of bodily autonomy is met with fierce resistance. Challenging these unforgiving systems, therefore, requires immense grit and enduring resilience.

“Any good news?”

“Any good news?” is the million-dollar question every newly married woman is asked. Once you’re married, there seems to be only one kind of “good news” that truly counts: a pregnancy. It’s the kind of good news that shadows all other good news.

I have been asked this question more times than I could count. Elders in the family and neighborhoods would come close, take a good look at my belly —some even running their hands across it —and pop that inevitable question. Before they could finish, I would tell them with a huge grin on my face, “Nope! Still no baby, just my well-rounded belly fat!”

And always, there’s more wisdom waiting to be dispensed. When a relative, with that unmistakable air of condescension, informs me that they had three children by the time they were my age, I simply smile and say, “Well, I had three degrees by then. Guess we can’t have everything, right?”

Humor and prepared comebacks have been my strategy to deflect the prying, because telling elders off or asking for privacy is considered disrespectful. But the persistent ones still come at you with follow-up questions and unsolicited advice.

They’ll ask how long you’ve been married (the reminder is for you, not them), lecture you on the importance of having children at the “right age”, and recommend the best gynecologist in town. You’ll also be warned about a couple now spending lakhs at fertility clinics because, apparently, they missed their right age by waiting too long to enjoy life (Yes, that’s considered a crime deserving Godly wrath, infertility as the punishment!)

If you are a woman in India, you cannot escape questions about your reproductive life, no matter where you are, even miles away from your family. They might come from someone sitting next to you on a flight or while standing in a queue. Any small talk with a stranger can begin with questions about your husband and the number of children you have. Having a male partner and multiple children is always assumed. If your answers to these questions are anything but affirmative, a long, awkward pause follows, usually accompanied by unsolicited advice on making the right decisions—before it’s too late.

If you are “lucky” enough to have a husband, the next obvious question is: “How long have you been married?” This time, the question is for a total stranger to calculate the years you have not been reproducing! If you’re lucky and it’s less than a year or two, they might be kind enough to say, “Don’t worry, you’ve got enough time!”

But if the math isn’t mathing—as Gen Z would say—they pity you, expressing their sorrow about your inability to give birth. The ordeal doesn’t end there. They will also subject you to personal questions: “Did you see a doctor?” “Whose fault is it?” “Are you deliberately not having one for now?”

In all these situations, there is little room to imagine someone voluntarily not having children —especially the idea of a woman willingly choosing not to be a mother. Not just in India, but in much of the world.

It’s interesting how motherhood is one of those rare ideas that has withstood the test of time and retained a near-universal appeal. While religious and cultural values are often blamed for being the anti-choice forces, modern and secular institutions also stand complicit through their laws and policies. The flourishing fertility industry—proof that science is hardly value-free—reinforces this by commodifying reproduction.

Despite all this, younger generations—mostly living in urban centers for education and work, globally connected, and exposed to modern ideas and lifestyles—are defying the age-old sacrosanct ideal of motherhood, and some are choosing unconventional parenthood paths such as being cat, dog or plant parents. One survey indicates a rise in childlessness from 7% of women in 2015-2016 to 12% in 2019-21, attributing this increase to higher levels of education and later age at marriage among women.

In one of the first books on Indian child-free women, Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childfree Women, Amrita Nandy explores the experiences of a growing number of childfree women. On a subject that has received little academic attention in India, she argues that in a deeply hierarchical and patriarchal society—where women who cannot have children are shamed, excluded and often whispered about as cursed—challenging motherhood is not easily tolerated. Nandy notes that most of the statistics don’t tell the number of childfree individuals as they’re still enumerated as childless in surveys.

These growing trends among the younger generations have sent everyone into a frenzy of worry: family patriarchs, community elders, religious headsand even the state.

To be fair, as a social science scholar, I understand that in many non-Western societies—where life is still largely organized around family and where values like individualism and personal choice carry little weight—it’s difficult for people to accept reproductive choices as a matter of autonomy. But what I cannot rationalize, what breaks through any cultural relativism, is the insensitive way in which involuntarily childless women are often treated.

In her study Stigma and Resistance Practices of Childless Women in South India, Catherine Riessman documents the various stigmas childless women face. Many participants described enduring derogatory comments and intrusive questions at public events. Such experiences often lead to the internalization of stigma and self-derogatory identities or even withdrawal from social gatherings—both of which can take a significant toll on mental health.

Just the other day, at a cousin’s wedding —family events like weddings are the designated intervention venues —when my aunt saw me still without any kids—or at least any “good news”—she cried, “It’s all doomsday signs! Nobody wants to get married, and the married ones don’t want to have kids! What’s wrong with you people?”

Or like the constant probing of when we will start or complete our family. Apparently, one can’t form a family just as a couple or be one with their animal or plant kids.

Or like this one uncle, who asked my cousin, “Do women like you even give birth?”—an obvious jibe at the growing number of women making unconventional life choices, which many believe have to do with women being “given too much education” and “allowed too much freedom.”

An entanglement of personal and religious beliefs

As an Indian Muslim, my procreation is entangled not just with personal and religious beliefs— where children are seen as rizq, blessings from God, and the righteous way to live is believed to be within a heterosexual, endogamous marriage with multiple children—but beyond that, it is also shaped by the presence of ethnic and religious nationalisms in the region. Here, reproduction extends far beyond the usual pro-life or anti-abortion religious discourse, becoming deeply political.

The Indian Muslim’s faith-based aspiration to have more children has often been vilified—casting family size as anti-developmental, anti-national, and in more imaginative accounts, even as a scheming attempt to take over the nation. Recently, the head of a majoritarian religious group in India warned of the long-term risks of declining birth rate and called for larger families “in the national interest,” further fueling the stoked fear of a supposed takeover by minority communities, especially the Muslims.

These rhetorics also often pose as pro-woman, but when situated within a history of forced sterilization and recent anti-constitutional, anti-Muslim governance, they have made many people deeply skeptical of mainstream reproductive discourse.

Across faith groups, highly charged discussions on the so-called crisis of young women’s deviant choices on marriage—intercaste or interreligious, same sex relationships and singledom—and choosing not to have children — are rampant. One may daydream of the communities and their leaders doing some kind of self-reflection or at least showing willingness to listen to the concerns of the women. Instead, all that is done is to blame modernism and Western liberal influences.

As a young Indian Muslim woman, I am conscious of the growing vulnerability of my community and wish to respect the belief systems of its members. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that blaming Western ideas for every uncomfortable change and vehemently opposing those who deviate is not going to do any good.

It only sharpens the irony—not to mention the hypocrisy. Before these “Western ideas” supposedly corrupted women, life hardly rosy. These authorities often forget how their ideas of marriage and procreation have often been unfair to women and children—child brides and teenage mothers are not relics of the distant past.

Even today, many women and young girls are denied a say in when or whom they marry, nor do they have control over their reproductive decisions. Marriage and children “before it’s too late,” are often prioritized over education and careers. From childhood, girls are constantly reminded that family must always be the real priority. Running familial responsibilities—not only their relationship with their spouses but also raising kids, navigating the in-laws and customs, and the whole shenanigans of desi traditions—almost single-handedly is the real duty.

Those who continue to do both are often stretched thin between work and family obligations, with little to no contributions from their male partners. You can have it all! —this, I believe, is one of the biggest tricks patriarchy has pulled on modern women. I’ve seen many ambitious women burn out or step away entirely.

When neither institutions nor communities make any real effort to ease these burdens, women find themselves in a system tilted against them.  I was once reminded by one of my husband’s relatives about a “hardworking” neighbor who was completing her degree while raising an infant, expecting another, and managing her in-laws’ household. The comparison wasn’t subtle: I was expected to juggle it all—not choose one or the other, but somehow do both simultaneously.

Deeply internalized guilt and moral quandary

As for women who try to do both, they’re harshly judged for any perceived mistake or oversight—a child’s illness or even an unremarkable lunch box was enough to be a bad mother: selfish, or not good enough.

Guilt and moral quandary—both deeply internalized—are among the many prices women pay, whether they pursue motherhood on their own terms or choose a life beyond mothering altogether. Even those fortunate enough to have some measure of choice must navigate countless invisible rules and expectations that weigh heavily on them, while their male counterparts face none of these pressures in order to study, build careers or shape their futures. For women, there is always a dissonance between traditional values and modern aspirations—a tension they are expected to reconcile alone.

Generations of women before me toiled for their families. I grew up hearing glorified stories of my grandmother’s hardship—her selflessness praised, her suffering romanticized. People spoke with admiration about how she never left the kitchen, feeding the many adults and children of a large joint family. That relentless labor wore her down, and it took her from us far too young. I have no memory of her—only the post-memory passed down by my mother, who still grieves about her loss.

I grew up watching my modern, working mother shoulder a double burden, rushing to the kitchen the moment she returned from work. All my life, I have seen mothers, aunts, cousins, friends carry more than they ever should have had to bear. As the saying goes, “A man’s work is sun to sun, a woman’s work is never done.” In the logic of patriarchy, women are deemed weak—except when it comes to absorbing endless reproductive and domestic labor.

I grew up being acutely aware of, and sensitive to, the lives of the women around me. Their experiences have shaped my choices—unlike what the patriarchy claims, as only influenced by “western” ideas. I can relate to the many young women today who are resisting marriage and childbearing, prioritizing their health and what truly matters for them.

Married at 22, and as a first-generation woman in academia, I simply wasn’t capable—or willing—to do it all, or to fit into any of the roles expected of me—whether the selfless caregiver or the “have-it-all” badass woman. And I’m going to drop a few balls—childbearing is one of them. I’ve held on to what I want, and earning a PhD was one of those non-negotiables.

Scholars like Chandni Bhambhani, Anand Inbanathan, Meera Suresh Babu, and Amrita Nandy all observe in their studies how women from urban spaces—educated, professional and mostly from the upper classes—are the ones who tend to rebel their way to child-freedom. They all agree on how identities associated with education and career make it comparatively easier for these women to resist internalizing societal judgments and to break away from expectations.

A privilege I’m deeply aware of

This is a privilege—to be able to make these decisions for myself—which I’m also deeply aware of. My move to a city, my education at an urban, liberal university, and my engagements with diverse ideas and discourses have all clearly shaped my thoughts and aspirations. My relationship with a like-minded partner, along with the relatively better social location of my family, also influenced and enabled my choice — all for better or worse.

Yet, like many participants of the above-mentioned studies share, it’s only relative ease, and many have grappled with intrusion and inner confusions.

“Is this normal?”

“Is there something really wrong with me?” “Am I too materialistic?”

“Am I missing out on the ‘joys of motherhood’?” “Am I making a mistake?”

“What if my aspirations and career don’t take off as I expect?”

“Will I have no purpose in life without being a mother?”

These doubts are constant companions.

Staying resilient has been challenging. Beyond the inner voices and not-so-nice comments and doom warnings about lonely old age, all I can do is try to understand what it is that I want to do in life. What brings a sense of purpose and joy to it, and what does not?  Being responsible for a child, let alone being a mother in a patriarchal society, is not on my list. And as an early career writer and researcher, neither do I’ve the time nor the money to afford a child—children are very expensive! All I want to look forward to waking up to is my morning cup of coffee and a book in my hand. This is my desire and instinct. For now, all I can do is follow them.

So, yes, motherhood is not for me. I value it and respect the ones who do it—it’s serious business! But it’s not my calling. I have chosen to do some other equally valuable—and serious—work with my life.