The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : When three is a crowd

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007
ePaper

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

When three is a crowd

Swathi Shivanand

Many couples are consciously taking a decision not to have children

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

No hackles: The number of couples deciding to remain individuals is on the rise.

BANGALORE: To be a woman is challenging enough. But to be a woman, who does not quite follow the “accepted norms” can prove to be more than an uphill task. With ideas, images and traditions linking a woman inextricably to her reproductive and nurturing capacities, some would consider a conscious decision to not have children “a deviation from the normal.”

Of course, as psychologists would argue, it is completely unscientific to brand this decision as deviant behaviour. It is not against fundamental instincts either because with evolution, human beings now make decisions based on their cognitive, logical and rational processes, says a professor at NIMHANS who did not want to be named. She further adds that what is instinctual is the sexual drive and not the desire to propagate.

The usual questions

Be that as it may, it remains fairly unarguable that women, and by extension couples, who decide not to have children are often asked to justify or even change their decision in myriad ways by family members, friends and even total strangers.

As couples go through different intrusive surgical procedures for their “bundle of joy,” there are others, physically capable of having children, who have simply decided to remain individuals, and not extend their personalities to being parents. With social pressures so overwhelming, what makes them take the decision and stick by it? “For me, it was quite deliberate. I never wanted to have children… I guess I never had that maternal instinct,” said thirty-something Jaya. While this is in retrospect, when Jaya initially made the decision it was because, as she says, “I wanted to live my life and not have this eternal source of worry.”

The amount of physical and emotional energy required to raise a child was the reason even Kanchan decided against it. “To not be responsible for someone else’s life gives one a lot of space to be and do what one wants,” said this attractive, athletic woman. So would she have done less with her life had she had a child? “No. I would have done all the things I have done. But I would probably have been more miserable because of the time I would have spent away from the child.”

Never the right time and never enough time, said Meenakshi about her decision. “I kept postponing it and then eventually decided I wanted my time for myself.” But does keeping the family to two strain the couple, making it a claustrophobic existence? “No it does not. My husband and I are very mindful of each other’s spaces. So we have our own zones that we go into when we want our space.”

Different women. Different reasons. Each with different ways of dealing with the accompanied pressures of a stand taken: their right to choose.

(Some names have been changed on request.)

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka