PATRIARCHAL FAMILY TENDENCIES AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Pakistani families are now tended to have more sons than daughters to stabilize their future economic condition. The aim of this research was to assess the reason that set into motion this very phenomenon of sex selection and consequent impacts in the social, economic, and psychological realms. The prime concern was to comprehend how certain cultures manufacture and perpetuate gender roles in general and patriarchal tendencies in particular that are created by individuals within a society who choose to imbue a particular structure with meaning. Hence, such tendencies are constantly toyed with and negotiated by actors subscribing to and questioning them. The supremacy of male child is engineered and hence knitted well into our patriarchal socio-cultural and religious structure from which one cannot be aloof and to escape from this labelling, and to support the practice of non-medical gender selection, ‘family balancing’ has taken the position.  The methods that the researcher used to collect data is constituent of two parts. First part explained rationale of the study design while the second part comprised the detailed description of each sub-part of this design including description of the questionnaire. As approach of the study was quantitative research, sampling of the study was probability sampling technique, data was collected through Face-to-Face structured interview schedule and lastly, analysis was done through SPSS. The study denotes that the son preference is the product of multifaceted psychological, social, and economic causes. It can be concluded that there are psychological, social, and economic causes as well as impacts that comprise some factors which have more importance for the nuance interpretation of the son preference than the overall factors themselves.

Keywords: Patriarchy, patriarchal family tendencies, sex selection, son preference, socio-economic, psychological causes and effects.