Childfree Married Women: Contesting Traditional Gender Roles

Introduction: Declining Fertility Rates and Being Childfree In recent decades, countries across the globe are witnessing all-time low birth rates. As per United Nations (UN) World Population Prospects (2022), the global average fertility rate declined from 5 births per woman in 1950 to 2.3 births per woman in 2021. The global fertility rate is predicted to decline further to 2.1 births per woman by the year 2050. According to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021), in the United States of America (USA), birth rates fell by 4 per cent in the year 2020 (Martin, Hamilton, and Osterman, 2021). Similar to the USA, other countries are also grappling with low fertility rates. For instance, in Japan, low birth rates and a growing ageing population have been one of the major concerns of the country for years. Likewise, other countries such as South Korea and Singapore are also facing and grappling with historically low fertility rates (Farzan, 2021). Despite cash incentives, childcare subsidies, maternity benefits, and congratulatory allowances, the fertility rates in these countries continue to remain low. In the same vein, though China introduced its three-child policy in 2021 and relaxed its notorious one-child policy in 2014, China's National Health Commission reported that the country's total fertility rate had dropped to 1.3 in 2020 which was much below the average fertility level of 2.0, required to maintain population levels (Peng, 2022). Though the report prepared by UN World Population Prospects (2022) indicated that India will emerge as the most populous country in the world by the year 2023, recent data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) indicated that India too is witnessing a decline in total fertility rates.