Intergenerational transmission of reproductive behaviour and desire of children in rural Bihar, India

Bihar, one of the most populous states of India is experiencing high fertility since decades. Along with exploring the socio-economic influence on fertility, it is important to understand the inter-familial influence on fertility behaviour. The need is even more important, when the state has prevalent norm of joint-family system in which mother-in-law has a strong control on reproductive behaviour of her daughter-in-law. Using the 2-generation data of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, this study examined the changes in reproductive behaviour across the generation and further measured the influence of older generation on the reproductive behaviour of younger generation. Result shows a positive association between age at menarche of mothers-in-law and daughter-in-law. Those mothers-in-law who have ever used any method of family planning were likely to influence the family planning use of her daughter-in-law. Contrary to that, the mothers-in-law who never used any contraceptives were found to be restricting the use of family planning to their daughters-in-law. The mothers-in-law significantly influenced to have an additional child to her daughters-in-law and the influence is stronger if previous children were girls. The result shows that economic benefits of having children are the most reported reasons to have additional child.