Celebrating a Girl Child, With a Heavy Heart
Notes on the uneasy acceptance of daughters in Bihar
A relative of mine recently became a father to a baby-girl. The immediate reactions from the women in the family, both his mother and his mother-in-law, were noticeably restrained. Not hostile. Not openly disappointed. But certainly not as enthusiastic as they would have been had the child been a boy.
That moment stayed with me because it was not an isolated incident. Since returning from Mauritius, I have either witnessed or heard of at least four births among relatives and acquaintances where the child was a girl. Across these otherwise unrelated families, I noticed the same emotional pattern: polite celebration, muted joy, and an undercurrent that said what everyone was too “civilized” to say aloud.
For someone who has spent more than three decades watching Indian society change, particularly upper and upper-middle-class society in Bihar, this was revealing. We often assume that certain social prejudices belong to an earlier India. That with education, urbanization, constitutional law and economic mobility, old hierarchies naturally weaken. Yet perhaps some prejudices do not disappear but merely learn better manners.
I have seen, firsthand, families continue having children in the hope that the next one would be a boy. I know a woman I have long regarded with affection, like an aunt, who has four daughters, suffered multiple miscarriages and eventually had a son. It was only after the birth of that son that she seemed to receive the full respect and acknowledgement she had long been denied within her immediate family.
I had assumed that such forms of son preference would have declined significantly by now. That assumption may have been naive.
Some time ago, I attended a celebratory gathering hosted by someone I know whose family had just welcomed a son after two daughters. During the conversation, he casually mentioned that he had been confident all along that this pregnancy would result in a boy. I asked how he could possibly know that. Had he somehow obtained access to prenatal sex determination, despite the legal prohibition? His answer surprised me. No, he said. The doctor conducting the ultrasound had not said anything. Instead, he had brought along someone who knew how to interpret ultrasound images and could infer the sex from what appeared on screen. What struck me was not merely the anecdote itself, but the excitement with which it was narrated, as though this were a form of clever ingenuity rather than anything requiring moral reflection.
That account shifted something in my understanding. Perhaps the more brutal historical practices one used to hear about son preference have become less common. But if that is true, the underlying preference has not disappeared but simply been adapted. And that is the more uncomfortable truth.
The law prohibits sex determination. The state formally insists that daughters and sons are equal. Courts have affirmed equal inheritance rights. Dowry is illegal. The language of constitutional morality is clear.
Yet social morality often remains something else entirely. Part of the answer is economic. In much of Indian society, especially beyond elite circles, a son is still perceived as long-term social security: the child imagined as remaining connected to the parental household, caring for ageing parents, and preserving continuity. A daughter, however loved, is still socially imagined as someone who will eventually belong to another household. Family wealth continues to be mapped through male continuity, despite legal reform. And dowry, regardless of its legal status, persists in social expectation. Raising a daughter, in many households, remains associated with significant future expenditure.
None of this justifies discriminatory preferences. But understanding why a social behavior persists requires more than moral condemnation.
One could argue that such attitudes survive because economic mobility and meaningful social security have not reached large parts of society. That would be a familiar explanation. But it becomes less satisfying when one observes even relatively privileged families, including educated households and government employees, participating in similar attitudes.
Which raises a harder question. If constitutional morality has formally entered public life, why has social morality remained so resistant? Is this merely about economics? Or is cultural conditioning far deeper than we are willing to admit?
I personally know one family with two daughters who took a very different route. The parents invested seriously in both daughters’ education. Both became engineers. One now lives abroad with her family; the other settled in another Indian city after marriage. I mention this cautiously. I do not yet know what old age looks like for those parents. I do not know whether their daughters will be physically present, emotionally available, financially supportive, or some combination of all three.
No single family’s story can settle a structural question. But the stories above points toward something worth taking seriously. Where economic confidence exists, gender anxiety appears easier to overcome, not necessarily because attitudes are changed, but because the underlying material calculation shifts. If that is even partially true, the implication is uncomfortable: social reform may require more than the right values. It may require the conditions under which those values become viable.
A society in transition contains contradictions. Upper-middle-class Bihar may no longer openly reject a girl child. There are no visible scenes of mourning when daughters are born. People celebrate. Sweets are distributed. Social media posts appear. But celebration is not the same as acceptance. And acceptance is not the same as equality. If joy still comes with hesitation, if a son still carries a different emotional and social weight, then the prejudice has not vanished but has simply become more polite.