What are the reasons Indian families continue to have large numbers of children?

For a long long time, Indian family system has been very
traditional and unified.Only in the last couple of decades, things are showing some
changes. At the back of Indian families being big and having large number of children,
you may find the following reasons:

1) traditionally
agriculture-based society, and more hands are required to work in the fields and at
home;

2) lack of education>lack of awareness in
family planning>lack of motivation in using
cotraception;

3) families being run by patriarchs, women
don't have freedom to exercise choice in the matter of
child-birth;

4) prevailing preference for a boy rather than
a girl-child, may also be a reason of giving birth to more children if the first issue
happens to be a girl;

5) long-cherished cultural values
associated with family love and relationships may be a good reason as
well.

On the whole, old, agriculture-based,
not-so-modernised, male-dominated societies like the Indian society do tend to have
families with a large number of children.