The Domestic Servant as Family Planning Innovator: An Indian Case Study

Abstract

This paper reports on the relatively low fertility of female domestic servants in India. domestic servant have fewer numbers of ever-born and living children than women working in other occupations and women who are unemployed. This low fertility, which appears to be volitional, may have its roots in the incompatibility between the servant's reproductive and the productive roles, as well as in the changing values generated by continued exposure to a wealthier lifestyle. It is suggested that family planning messages aimed at and elicited by more "elite" classes may have a greater impact on fertility behavior than message from prompters with a socioeconomic background similar to the clients', which tend to concentrate on the harsher day-to-day realities of poverty.