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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how middle-class mothers in Delhi-NCR face an ethical double bind: expected to provide care but unable to seek it. Women’s refusal of medical care, or ‘noble deaths,’ protest the caregiving pressures and reorient familial flows of care amidst a changing intergenerational contract

Paper long abstract:

The literature on labour has established that the work of caregiving, motherhood, and social reproduction is often overlooked and devalued, while work outside the home is prioritised and compensated. However, there’s less focus on how caregivers receive care themselves, and how this impacts their choices around paid work, self-worth and even if they choose to continue to live. Drawing from a larger ethnography on the suicide stories told by married middle-class women in Delhi-NCR, this paper examines how the affective experiences of motherhood echo the sacrificial themes in suicide stories, revealing the ‘noble death’ phenomenon - where women wilfully refuse medical care to avoid being a burden to their children.

Using case studies of women at different stages of motherhood, this paper explores how women face an ethical double bind: expected to provide unlimited care, yet unable to ask for care in return. Cultural expectations of what I term "committed motherhood" require women to reorient their desires, actions, and sense of self around their children. Meanwhile, in the shifting intergenerational contract, philosophies of aging increasingly emphasise independence and self-reliance (Lamb 2009) making it even harder for women to seek reciprocal care. In this context, work outside the home becomes a respite from the demands of committed motherhood. Yet it is also a site where ideologies of motherhood and successful aging are reified. Hence, the refusal to seek care serves as both a protest against these pressures and a way to reorient the flow of care within families.