By Shelly Pyngrope Phawa & Balakmen Suting
For decades, Meghalaya’s matrilineal system has been held up as a rare example of female-centred social organisation in an otherwise patriarchal country. Property descends through the youngest daughter, children take their mother’s clan name, and women are visibly present in the marketplaces and homes that define public life in Meghalaya. Yet beneath this reputation lies a more complicated reality: a rising number of single mothers, widespread informal unions, and one of the highest rates of polygyny anywhere in India.
A demographic paradox
Meghalaya’s fertility patterns do not fit the pattern seen elsewhere in India. While most states have fallen below replacement-level fertility, Meghalaya’s total fertility rate has remained among the highest in the country — 2.9 as of NFHS-5 (2019–21), easing only slightly to 2.2 in NFHS-6 (2023–24), still tied for second-highest nationally. Modern contraceptive prevalence in the state is the lowest of any Indian state, at roughly 30 percent against a national average above 50 percent.
What sets Meghalaya apart is not simply that women have more children, but that childbearing continues far later into a woman’s life — well into the thirties and forties — than elsewhere in India. This is not primarily a story about religion, since Christian-majority neighbours Nagaland and Mizoram have seen much sharper fertility declines. The more decisive factor is structural: weak legal accountability for fathers, limited economic security for women, and the erosion of the traditional safety net once provided by the maternal uncle, or kňi, whose customary duty was to protect his sister’s household. As that protective role has faded, men have gained the practical freedom to father children with reduced consequence, while women continue to be assumed self-sufficient by default.
The rise of polygyny
Nowhere is this imbalance more visible than in the state’s polygyny rate — the highest in India. Polygynous marriage in Meghalaya rose from around 4 percent in 2015–16 to roughly 6 percent in 2019–21, several multiples above the national average. East Jaintia Hills alone has recorded a rate of nearly 20 percent, the highest of any district in the country. National data has also found that polygamy is more prevalent among Christians in India than among Muslims or Hindus — a finding that runs counter to popular assumption, and one in which matrilineal, Christian-majority Meghalaya is the clear outlier.
Polygyny here rarely takes the form of a formally registered plural marriage. More often it appears as informal, sequential, or overlapping relationships with no legal recognition, leaving successive partners and their children with no enforceable claim to maintenance once a relationship ends.
Not everyone reads these trends the same way. Some critics argue that framing polygyny and informal unions purely as a story of male irresponsibility overlooks the agency women retain within Khasi society’s matrilineal structure — since property, clan name, and custody of children typically stay with the mother regardless of a union’s legal status, women here are less dependent on a formal marriage for security than in many other parts of India. Others note that such unions are not always imposed: some women choose them over formal marriage for reasons of companionship, compatibility, or personal independence, and in polygynous households co-wives sometimes share childcare and domestic responsibilities in ways that ease, rather than add to, the burden on any one mother. It is also argued that informality does not always mean absence — many fathers in these unions continue to provide for their children voluntarily, even without legal compulsion, and treating every informal union as a failure of male accountability risks flattening what, for some families, remains a functioning arrangement.
Rising single motherhood
The consequence is a steadily growing population of single mothers, many of whom never marry the fathers of their children in any legally recognised sense. Some studies place the rate of single motherhood as high as 15 percent in parts of rural Meghalaya. Female-headed households stood at 41 percent in NFHS-5 — more than double the national average of 18 percent — reflecting not empowerment, but abandonment.
Single mothers face challenges that fall broadly into three categories.
Economic: Single mothers often bear the entire financial responsibility of the household — livelihood, education, healthcare, and other basic needs of their children — without a partner’s income to fall back on. Customary law offers little recourse for maintenance in the absence of a registered marriage, leaving many with no legal avenue to claim support and pushing them further into poverty.
Social: Single mothers may experience social isolation, stigma, discrimination, and stereotypes. Social expectations around marriage and family create additional pressure on women raising children alone, in a society that simultaneously expects women to be capable and self-reliant.
Psychological: Single mothers may experience emotional distress, stress, depression, shame, anxiety, and emotional unrest. The combined burden of financial responsibility, childcare, social stigma, and relationship difficulties affects their well-being — yet mental health support in this context remains scarce.
Effects on children: Children growing up in these households are affected in turn. They often receive limited support — financial, social, and psychological — and grow up without the steady guidance of both parents. Many also take on responsibilities beyond their years, from housework to contributing to family income, well before they would otherwise be expected to.
There is also an intergenerational cost: more than one in three children in Meghalaya was found to be stunted in the most recent survey round, the worst figure among Indian states, with stunting exceeding 55 percent among children born to mothers who had already had five or more children.
Informal marriage and cohabitation without legal recognition
Informal marriage or cohabitation without legal recognition is another important issue. In some sections of Khasi society, couples live together as husband and wife without formally registering their marriage. While such relationships may be socially accepted within the community, they confer none of the legal protections that formal marriage does. If the relationship ends, the woman typically has no documentary basis on which to pursue maintenance, child support, or a share of jointly acquired property — precisely the gap the Meghalaya Compulsory Registration of Marriage Act, 2012, was designed to close. Compliance with the Act remains patchy, particularly in rural areas.
What needs to change
Meghalaya’s Health Policy 2021 identifies gender inequality and poverty as root causes and calls for birth spacing as a health right alongside women’s economic empowerment. But family planning messaging alone will not resolve a problem rooted in weak legal accountability. What is missing is enforceable legal protection for women in informal unions, targeted social protection for female-headed households, and a shift that places reproductive and financial responsibility on men as well — given that men in polygynous and informal unions currently bear almost no measurable accountability for the children they father.
For a society that prides itself on matrilineal descent, the experience of many Khasi single mothers tells a more sobering story: cultural visibility has not translated into legal or economic security. Addressing that gap — through marriage registration, maintenance enforcement, and support systems built for single mothers — may do more to change outcomes for women and children than family planning outreach alone.
(Data cited from NFHS-5 2019–21, NFHS-6 2023–24, the International Institute for Population Sciences)
