‘35 per cent urban women prefer just 1 child’

Kolkata: Thirty five per cent working mothers in urban India avoid considering a second child, said a recent random survey conducted by ASSOCHAM Social Development Foundation. The stresses of modern marriage, job pressures, cost of raising children is key reasons behind mothers wanting to stop at the first child.

The survey was carried out on 1500 working mothers of only children ahead of Mother’s Day on Sunday. The random survey was carried out in 10 cities including Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Lucknow and Mumbai during the course of the past one month. It intended to find out how much time working mothers generally spent with their children and plans of adding or not adding to the family, and why.

Of the over 500 respondents who did not want to have another child, many said that their jobs could get jeopardised if they took a second maternity leave.

Favouritism is another important reason as to why many respondents said they do not want another child to ensure that attention did not get divided, more so as gender is a common reason for favouring one child over another, said many respondents citing various reasons as to why they preferred sticking to the single-child policy.

A majority of respondents said their spouse did not support their decision of stopping at one. “The government should provide certain supportive measures and incentives such as reducing taxes for families with a single child,” they said. so that the single-child policy can be carried out better,” opined most respondents.