URBANA, Ill., USA – In rural India, having a son is a strong social expectation that puts pressure on women to bear male children. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines how a firstborn son affects the well-being of childbearing women and their mothers-in-law, as well as the broader implications for household dynamics and economic outcomes.
“Mental health is shaped by individual characteristics, community characteristics, and social norms. In India, women are socially pressured to have a boy, because sons guarantee lineage and old age security. Women go through a lot of stress around childbearing; not only whether you will have a child, but if this child is going to be a son or a daughter,” said co-author Catalina Herrera-Almanza, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois.
When a woman marries, she typically goes to live with her husband’s family, and the mother-in-law holds a prominent position in the household. In previous studies, the researchers have documented the role of the mother-in-law in serving as a gatekeeper of family planning decisions for women. Here, they decided to further examine the intrahousehold dynamics between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.
“There is an extensive body of research on son preference in India, as well as fertility and family planning decisions. But there is very little evidence on the mental health of women living in the same household,” Herrera-Almanza said. “A major contribution of this work is our effort to disentangle the implications of firstborn sons for co-resident mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.”
The researchers surveyed a sample of married women of reproductive age and their co-residing mother-in-law in Jaunpur district, Uttar Pradesh. When there was more than one daughter-in-law in the household, they included the youngest woman. They collected socioeconomic and demographic data, as well as information on mental health using a survey that screens for the risk of depression and anxiety.
They found the strongest effects on the mother-in-law’s mental health; on average, they had a 15% lower risk of depression or anxiety when their daughter-in-law had a firstborn son. These results are equivalent to other findings measuring the effect of inheritance reforms or pension programs that provide added security for older women, Herrera-Almanza noted.
The researchers did not find any effects for the daughters-in-law overall, but when they broke down the results by age group, they found that risk of mental health consequences increased as women grew older.
“For the mother-in-law, having a grandson is a relief at any age. For the daughter-in-law, as she gets older and her reproductive horizon is closing, it is much more stressful not to have a son,” Herrera-Almanza said.
The data did not indicate anything about the men’s role, possibly because they are often migrant workers who are absent from the home for months at a time, leaving the mother-in-law as the de facto authority over domestic life.
However, the researchers found the effects of a firstborn son had economic and social implications.
“When a woman has a firstborn son, her mother-in-law is more likely to approve of her using family planning and birth control, which makes a lot of sense. Once you have achieved your fertility goals, as a mother-in-law, you are good,” Herrera-Almanza said.
With the improvement in mental health, mothers-in-law, particularly those with younger daughters-in-law, are more likely to help them with childcare duties and support them in working outside the home, thus boosting their labor force participation and economic opportunities.
Herrera-Almanza noted that similar social norms extend throughout much of Southeast Asia and Africa, and they are difficult to change.
“Social norms are sticky, but there is evidence you can try to persuade people and clear up misperceptions. The Indian government already has programs targeting the mother-in-law; for example, through community-level activities that encourage women to discuss family planning with their mothers-in-law. Based on our results, we are in the process of designing an intervention that aims to change the dynamics around son preference and improve women’s well-being,” she concluded.
The paper, “Son preference, intergenerational household dynamics, and women’s mental health in India,” is published in the Journal of Development Economics [10.1016/j.jdeveco.2026.103867]. Authors include S. Anukriti, Catalina Herrera-Almanza, Shahadat Hossain, and Mahesh Karra.
Research in the College of ACES is made possible in part by Hatch funding from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. This study was also supported by funding from the World Bank Development Research Group and the Program on Women’s Empowerment Research (POWER) through a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.