"Nowadays Who Wants Many Children?" Balancing Tradition and Modernity in Narratives Surrounding Contraception Use Among Poorer Women in West Bengal, India (Report‪)‬

Abstract This paper investigates how poorer women in West Bengal, India balance the ideas of modernization and tradition in their choices to use birth control. Ideologically, Indian women have traditionally been placed within the context of the home and valued principally as wives and mothers. Children, therefore, are tremendously important for women within this framework. In contrast, the ideology of the relatively well structured and very large family planning program asks especially poorer women to have fewer children for the good of the family and the nation.