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Population growth and social change: a note on rural society.


 Changing social conditons, particularly in rural areas, often create a feeling of normlessness. For such major changes as family limitation to be accepted in rural India, those involved must understand the total social change which will be necessary. In rural areas today the desire for motherhood is a matter of being accepted. A barren woman suffers social ostracism; folk tales tell of even animals refusing to eat a meal prepared by a barren woman. A women with a large family is particularly respected, especially if they are well provided for. The other reasons given for having large numbers of children are family survival, care in old age, increase in family income, to get more share in the property, to follow the community pattern, and to make the home happier. There is a rationale for most of these. High infant and child mortality account for the family survival, The only security the parents have is the children. More children increase the family share in a joint-family land-holding. Raising the age at marriage for girls has often been suggested as a population control measure, but what is the girl to do until 19? Rural parents do not feel their obligations to their daughter have been discharged until she is married and it is the parents who are blamed if no arrangments have been made. The idea of her becoming educated is not socially acceptable and rural boys are reluctant to marry educated girls. India's values pertaining to divorce, widow remarriage, and abortion are already undergoing change. Migration to the cities is bringing about change. Looking to the cities may bring about modernization, but the fact that the young men are the ones moving away is leading a lack of leadership in the villages. To bring about the social conditions favorable to modernization agriculture should be modernized, reducing the need for labor; factories should be built in rural areas to take up this slack in agricultural employment, and perhaps it would become acceptable for girls to work in them; rising expectations should be encouraged; and efforts should be made to encourage better diet, better child care, education, and other factors which would lead to a small family norm. When family planning programs are introduced in the context of total social change, chances of success are greater.
