Published Paper Details:

Son preference remains an important component to shape demographic trend and cultural reality in the country despite its socio-economic advancement. The research explores the prevalence, determinants, and consequences of son preference among residents of Nabadwip Municipality, West Bengal, through primary data collection from 100 participants. The adopted research methodology is a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, which include descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, odds ratios, and logistic regression analysis. The findings reveal a consistent but verities in dimension on son preference and related complex opinion of parents. While a majority (56%) favored balanced gender distribution in their family, 28% had a greater preference for male children, as also evidenced by the existing Child Sex Ratio of 909 girls to every 1000 boys. Education turns out to be the most important variable as higher education level tends to decrease gender bias. On the contrary, low socio-economic classes tend to exhibit son preference. Further, this research indicates that there is an influence of son preference on fertility practices such as delayed use of contraception and following the 'stopping rule'. Issues of lineage, old age security, and dowry continue to drive cultural influences in this regard. Although knowledge of gender equity programs is fairly high, their effects are rather minimal in terms of changing existing mindsets.