Women’s pathways to motherhood in India: The intersecting roles of partnership and educational trajectories

Abstract

Motherhood holds great importance in women’s transition to adulthood in India, where childlessness is often perceived as an inability to conceive and experienced as a failure. However, with globalization and declining fertility rates, family dynamics are shifting, and childlessness appears as an evolving reality beyond biomedical challenges related to procreation. This research aims to investigate whether there are indications of an emerging category of women forgoing motherhood for reasons beyond a lack of reproductive agency. Additionally, it explores whether this group differs in educational and partnership trajectories from typical patterns of transition to adulthood associated with childlessness in India. We use sequence history analysis on data from the National Family Health Survey (2019–2021). Findings indicate social stratification in childlessness, intertwined with broader disparities in family and educational trajectories. While family-oriented paths, particularly those involving marriage, remain most conducive to motherhood, highly educated women are more likely to delay childbearing. Moreover, results reveal a U-shaped relationship between education and hazard of first-time motherhood within conventional partnership trajectories. Education fosters reproductive agency, but also introduces competing aspirations that may limit family’s place in women’s lives. This study makes an original contribution to the limited quantitative literature that explores childlessness in India as a polarized phenomenon and highlights the innovative use of sequence history analysis in life course studies. Overall, by exploring childlessness, this research indicates broader reproductive inequalities as well as differences in life trajectories and aspirations, thereby calling for more inclusive reproductive health and social policies to address these disparities.