Indian Parents Raise Sons for Dowry, Daughters for Sacrifice

From the moment a child is born in many Indian homes, their future is silently scripted. Sons are raised with the unspoken assurance that one day they will be rewarded, with inheritance, with care, and too often, with dowry. Daughters, on the other hand, are raised with the preparation that they must eventually leave, bend, and sacrifice, first for their family, then for another’s. This cycle is so normalised that most do not even pause to see the injustice in it.

When a son is born, relatives celebrate. “He will carry the family name,” they say. His education is seen as an investment because his future earnings will circle back to the family. Every rupee spent on him is viewed as secure. But when a daughter is born, the language shifts: “We must save for her wedding.”
Her education is often optional, her career secondary. What becomes non-negotiable is the dowry, gold, property, or cash, that her parents must hand over one day. The boy is raised as an asset; the girl, as an expense.

Daughters are conditioned to adjust, to keep quiet, to give up their dreams so that “peace” in the family can continue. Parents proudly call their daughters “paraya dhan”, someone else’s wealth, without realising how cruel those words sound. The very ones who loved her the most become the ones who prepare her to shrink, to serve, to accept inequality as destiny.
Her silence is packaged as virtue. Her sacrifices are paraded as strength. Yet behind every smile is a woman taught that her worth is measured by what she can give up.

What most families fail to see is that this culture wounds both genders. Men are raised to feel entitled — to money, to obedience, to superiority. This entitlement poisons their relationships, burdens their marriages, and weakens their character. Women are raised to feel less, less valuable, less deserving, less free.
This robs them of confidence, independence, and dignity. Both are betrayed, but in different ways. Society calls this tradition. In reality, it is a silent theft of humanity.

If parents truly love their children, their duty is not to prepare them for roles of dominance or submission, but to give them the tools of freedom and dignity. A son who demands dowry has not been raised well. A daughter who cannot stand for herself has not been empowered.
Parents must stop asking, “How will society see us?” and start asking, “What kind of adults are we sending into society?” That shift alone can change generations.

The truth is simple: a son raised for dowry becomes a man who takes; a daughter raised for sacrifice becomes a woman who gives until she is empty. Love should never raise children to exploit or to endure exploitation. Real love prepares both sons and daughters not for dowry, not for sacrifice, but for respect, for themselves and for each other.
Until that becomes the norm, every birth in India will carry not just hope, but also the weight of an old injustice.