Womens’ participation

In Rural India, Society’s Preference For Sons Shapes Two Generations Of Women’s Mental Health

A study of 1,296 mother-in-law and daughter-in-law pairs in rural Uttar Pradesh found that when a daughter-in-law’s firstborn was a boy, her mother-in-law was measurably less likely to screen at risk for anxiety or depression. The effect was comparable in size to the mental health benefits of pension programs and inheritance law reforms seen in other Indian research. Daughters-in-law showed no average mental health effect, but those over 27 with no son faced significantly higher risk. Among daughters-in-law under 25, a firstborn son raised the odds of having worked in the past year by 15 percentage points, largely because mothers-in-law became more supportive of them working. ….[READ]