South Asian young people’s choice not to have children

Siddiqui is a freelance journalist, writing for national and international publications. She is one of a number of young people in South Asia who do not want to have children.

Birth rates are falling in this region, similar to the rest of the world. According to Ayo Wahlberg, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, the birth rate needed to maintain a population is 2.1 children per woman. India currently has a ratio of 2, expected to decrease to 1.29 in 2050 and 1.04 in 2100. The numbers for Nepal and Bangladesh are 1.85 and 2.07 respectively.

In Pakistan, the birth rate remains at 3.32. However, young people like Siddiqui are not rare, signaling a future downward trend. Siddiqui said her decision not to have children stemmed from financial issues. Her childhood was associated with economic instability. Her parents had no financial plan for their children. Her friends, women in their 30s, made the same decision.

Siddiqui said he will keep this decision even when he gets married. She worries about her future and her ability to pay for life. Inflation, cost of living, trade deficit and debt make Pakistan’s economy unstable. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has approved a loan of 7 billion USD for this country in September 2024.

Slow economic growth, inflation, lack of jobs and foreign debt are common problems in South Asian countries. The cost of living crisis forces many couples to work more, leaving less time for personal life and children.

Sociologist Sharmila Rudrappa conducted a study on “involuntary infertility” among information technology workers in Hyderabad, India, published in 2022. The study looked at how individuals do not are infertile, but may make decisions that lead to infertility later due to circumstances.

Volunteers said they lack time to exercise, cook and spend on relationships. Work makes them exhausted, leaving little time for social interaction.

Similarly, Mehreen, 33 years old, lives in Karachi with her husband, parents-in-law and grandparents. The couple works full time and is wondering about having a baby. Emotionally, they want to have children, but intellectually they don’t. The cost of raising children is one reason they almost certainly won’t do this.

Mehreen said older generations consider raising children as an investment, they expect their children to take care of them when they get old. This thinking is no longer relevant to her generation due to the economic recession. She is also concerned about dividing parenting responsibilities. Society expects her to be the one to shoulder this burden more than her husband, even though they both make money.

In addition, climate change also has some impact. Mehreen worries about raising children in polluted environments and an uncertain future. She recalls that when she was young, she never hesitated when eating seafood.

“Now, I have to think a lot, considering microplastics and all that. If it’s that bad now, what will it be like in 20-30 years?”, she said.

In her essay collection Apocalypse Babies, Pakistani author and teacher Sarah Elahi chronicles the difficulties of parenting in a time of climate anxiety. Climate change was an ignored issue during her childhood in Pakistan. However, as global temperatures are rising, she finds her children and students living in “anxiety”.

Many experts and organizations, such as Save the Children, say that the effects of climate change will make life more difficult in the coming years.

Siddiqui realized having children was not feasible when she wrote an essay about the environment. “Do you really want to bring a child into a world where disaster lurks after you die?” she asked.

Experts from the Atlantic Council (USA) and University College London (UCL), agree that South Asia is one of the regions most affected by climate change.

IQAir’s 2023 World Air Quality Report found that cities in South Asia, including Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, had the poorest air quality among the 134 countries monitored.

According to an assessment published in April 2023 by the Environmental Research Group at Imperial College London, poor air quality affects every aspect of human health. Scientists point out that pregnant women breathing polluted air can affect the development of the fetus. Bad air quality causes miscarriage and stillbirth. For young women like Siddiqui and Mehreen, this is a reason not to have children.

Siddiqui has built strong relationships with friends and people around him. If everything went ideally, she said she would live in a community with her friends. However, the fear of loneliness sometimes still appears in her mind.

A week before speaking to Al Jazeera, she sat in a coffee shop with two friends, women in their late 30s who also didn’t want children. They talked about their fear of leaving.

“It’s something that haunts me quite a bit,” Siddiqui told friends.

But now, she put it out of her mind, thinking that this was meaningless.

“I don’t want to have children just so I can have someone to take care of me when I’m 95 years old. I think that’s ridiculous,” she expressed.