Female work participation and child health: an investigation in rural Tamil Nadu, India*

This paper seeks to examine the linkage between mothers’ work and child health. The data are from a survey of 75 working and 75 non-working women in a village in Tamil Nadu, India. The results show that the working women spend on an average 1.7 hours less than the non-working women on child care. The duration of breastfeeding also is shorter among the working women. The morbidity rates were higher for the children of working women than for the children of nonworking women. Logistic regression analysis showed that the children of working women are at a significantly greater risk of morbidity even when socio-economic factors are controlled. The results, however, do not show a significant variation in morbidity by sex. Traditionally a woman's place has been at home and a generation ago, her employment outside the home was looked down upon by the society. This situation has now changed and women have started seeking employment outside their homes through gross economic necessity followed by the desire to raise economic status, to have an independent income, to make use of education, to pursue a career etc. In rural areas, however, poor women may go to work mainly out of sheer economic necessity. In the demographic literature, the discussion of the relationship between women's work and child mortality has almost always focused on paid employment outside the home. At low skills and in less developed economies, working women's additional income may be quite small. The mother's employment is seen as affecting the family through changes in care received by children. If the woman is working, she is likely to spend less time on feeding children, cleaning them, and playing with them. In the past, older siblings or grandparents were usually available to take care of young infants while the mother was employed; but because of social change and modernization, the extended family has become less common. All these factors may contribute to poor child health. On the basis of a review of literature, Ware (1984) observed that women's economic activities will have an adverse effect on child care only where the activity is incompatible with child rearing or where the mother lacks access to another person able to care for the child. There is a possibility of child neglect and malnutrition due to an early abandonment of breastfeeding. Very few studies in India have specifically investigated the effect of mothers’ work on child health. However, a few analyses of child mortality have examined mothers’ work ________________ *The author would like to express her sincere thanks to Prof. P.M. Kulkarni, Head of the Department, Population Studies, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, for his valuable suggestions and encouragement.