Curse of the Mummy‐ji: The Influence of Mothers‐in‐Law on Women in India^†

Abstract

Restrictive social norms and strategic constraints imposed by family members can limit women's access to and benefits from social networks, especially in patrilocal societies. We characterize young married women's social networks in rural India and analyze how inter‐generational power dynamics within the household affect their network formation. Using primary data from Uttar Pradesh, we show that co‐residence with the mother‐in‐law is negatively correlated with her daughter‐in‐law's mobility and ability to form social connections outside the household, especially those related to health, fertility, and family planning. Our findings suggest that the mother‐in‐law's restrictive behavior is potentially driven by the misalignment of fertility preferences between the mother‐in‐law and the daughter‐in‐law. The lack of peers outside the household lowers the daughter‐in‐law's likelihood of visiting a family planning clinic and of using modern contraception. We find suggestive evidence that this is because outside peers (a) positively influence daughter‐in‐law's beliefs about the social acceptability of family planning and (b) enable the daughter‐in‐law to overcome mobility constraints by accompanying her to health clinics.

Working Women’s Decision-Making Power at Home: Evidence from Four North Indian Urban Clusters

“…Compared to daughters, daughters-in-law are at a distinct disadvantage. This resonates with literature on the constrained social and physical mobility daughters-in-law experience in joint family households (Anukriti et al, 2020). Wives fare better than either daughters or daughters-in-law, although this is not true across all decision domains.…”

Mothers’ Social Networks and Socioeconomic Gradients of Isolation

“…The panel nature of the data allows us to document high persistence of this isolation over the four years that our annual surveys cover. The high level of isolation we document is consistent with qualitative (Crivello et al 2018;Sanyal 2009) and quantitative (Anukriti et al 2020;Kandpal and Baylis 2019) evidence from rural India.…”

Social norms and perceptions drive women’s participation in agricultural decisions in West Java, Indonesia

“…Table 2 also shows that women's individual characteristics are not playing a significant role, contrary to the findings of previous research (e.g. Agarwal 1997; Anderson et al Anukriti et al 2020;Doss 2013;Frankenberg and Thomas 2001;Rammohan and Johar 2009). 9 Thus, social norms are of utmost importance compared to other observable characteristics.…”

“…Brown 2009;Quisumbing and Malucio 2003), whether or not parents/parents-in-law living in the household 6 (e.g. Anukriti et al 2020;Bayudan-Dacuycuy 2013), land size (e.g. Alwang et al 2017), and household asset index (e.g.…”

“…The study byBayudan-Dacuycuy (2013) in the Phillippines shows that the presence of the extended families (especially parents) increases the wife's participation in decision making, in which the existence of parents tend to act as a balancing element in the household. In India the presence of parents in law (particularly of the mother-in-law) in the household can undermine women's participation in decisions and women's agency(Anukriti et al 2020). …”