WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

IS SON PREFERENCE EMERGING AMONG THE NAYARS OF KERALA …?
in “female” occupations such as teachers, college lecturers, librarians,
white-collar workers, and nurses, with a few manual labourers or
domestic servants. Men had a wider range of occupations including
graduate professions (lawyer, engineer, government officer), skilled
trades (goldsmith, mechanic), white collar (clerk) or manual (office
peon, driver, construction and manual labourers), and retirees. This
again illustrates recent patterns in Kerala economy, where female
employment opportunities have diminished, relative to those of men’s,
as labour-intensive agrarian and industrial opportunities have declined
and high out-migration of labour is common.
Table 3 shows child birth, and use of modern contraception and
prenatal care (i.e. use of NRTs), by socioeconomic group and by age
group. These births occurred approximately from the 1930s (oldest
women) to the early 2000s (the youngest women). By contrasting
children born among older and younger age groups, we see Kerala’s
well known dramatic fertility decline. Kerala’s fertility decline has been
widely discussed in the literature because it has been achieved at
comparatively low levels of economic development, and has been
attributed to factors including high female education, substantial
poverty, health program factors, and broad socioeconomic changes
brought about by modernization including the high cost of living,
schooling and health care, dowry payments, and to prevent
fragmentation of property holdings (Basu, 1986; Srinivasan, 1995;
Sushama, 1996). The middle socioeconomic group had the highest
fertility, but the differences across groups were not great. As typical for
India, contraceptive methods other than sterilization were rarely
mentioned and thus not reported. Receiving prenatal care does not
differ much by class (due to the high availability of medical facilities
and high literacy). More younger women had prenatal care, and those
in the middle age groups were more likely to be sterilized compared to
older women (among whom family planning was less common) and
younger ones (who may not have completed childbearing).
Prenatal care includes weight and blood tests, inoculations, vitamin
and iron tablets. About 50 percent of women who received prenatal
care underwent a routine ultrasound scan to check foetal development
and position, which can also reveal the sex of the foetus. About 1
percent reported undergoing amniocentesis, permitted only when
specific risk factors for birth defects exist. By law, practitioners are
barred from revealing the foetus’ sex (Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques
Act, 1994). Some respondents wanted to know the sex for reasons not
related to sex selection (e.g. curiosity), despite the law. One respondent
said “if the doctor knows you well, he will tell you”.
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