“If I cannot give birth to a child, why would anyone accept me?”: Menstrual anxieties, late marriage, and reproductive aging

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore how women who are unable to conform to age-specific conventions of marriage and childbearing construct their adult identities in socio-cultural contexts that valorize fertility and mandate compulsory marriage and motherhood. Through a detailed ethnography of women’s experiences with menstrual anomalies and reproductive aging, this study examines Odia women’s negotiations with their seemingly “incomplete bodies” and “disrupted identities” in the backdrop of experiencing infertility or anticipating it.