Gender-Parity-Specific Fertility Decline in India: A Spatiotemporal Study

India, a developing country, has been experiencing a fertility transition since the 1960s, with a significant acceleration in the past decade. Over the past 30 years, India’s total fertility rate (TFR) has declined from 3.4 in 1992–1993 to 2.0 in 2019–2021. Hence, the present chapter focuses on understanding the intricate relationship between declining fertility desires and demographic factors, particularly gender and the number of previous offspring. It places particular emphasis on the acceptance of daughters within the cohort of nonmenopausal, nonsterilized mothers aged 15–45 years. Using data from NFHS-1 and NFHS-5 and employing descriptive analyses and multivariate models, our chapter reveals a 30 percentage-point increase (from 39.5% to 70.8%) in mothers’ completing their childbearing up to parity 2. The reluctance to have another child increased by 10.7 percentage points (PPs) among mothers with one daughter, whereas families with two daughters saw such an increase by 35 percentage points between survey rounds. A multivariate analysis demonstrates that educated working mothers are more inclined to accept families with only girls. However, a contradictory decrease in the desire for additional children when mothers have exactly two daughters indicates a complex interplay aimed at avoiding having only girls successively. Additionally, awareness of rising childrearing costs and economic instability compel financially disadvantaged couples, particularly those not employed or engaged in primary sectors, to limit their family size to one or two children, regardless of gender composition. Thus, although fertility declines in India demonstrate a balanced gender-parity distribution, labeling it as gender equity in fertility outcomes demands further investigation.