If a Western woman aspiring for bhakti doesn’t want to marry or have children, how can we guide?

If a woman who is introduced to bhakti asks, why do I need to get married? And even if I get married, why do I need to have children? How do we answer? I’ll answer in three points. First is, what is our purpose in attracting, in inviting or attracting people to practice Krishna consciousness? So, that will be the spiritual side. Then I’ll talk about the social psychological side.

And then third, I’ll talk about how we act in such situations at a practical level. So, first is at a spiritual level, our purpose is to spread Krishna consciousness. Our purpose is not to get people, whether men or women, to get married or to have children.

So, if somebody is coming to Krishna, they should never be made to feel that if I become a devotee, this is what I’ll have to do. And this is an essential part of being a devotee. It may be an essential part of the social fabric in which bhakti had been practiced in the past.

And not just that social fabric, but the social fabric of the world at large. But somebody may choose not to get married, somebody may choose not to have children. And at one level, that is their individual business.

So, there are things which are non-negotiable in Krishna consciousness and there are things which are negotiable. Sometimes, if we present a very digital version of bhakti, this is bhakti and this is not bhakti, one zero. Then, because of many things which are not centrally important in bhakti, people may go away from the path of bhakti.

They think, I cannot do this. So, just on the male side, sometimes if somebody is introduced to bhakti by a very strong brahmachari preacher, that person may start thinking that if I don’t become a brahmachari, I won’t be a serious devotee. And if they find that they can’t stay a brahmachari, then they don’t become a grahastha.

They think grahasthas are fallen and they just leave bhakti completely. So, no ashram is like a necessary thing for practicing bhakti. So, that’s the first thing.

What people do in their personal lives is not the most important thing for us. Our most important thing is that they learn to practice bhakti by chanting Jani Krishna’s name, by studying the scriptures and drawing their consciousness towards Krishna. Now, having said that Srila Prabhupada didn’t just want Krishna consciousness, he wanted a society for Krishna consciousness.

And that’s why it’s not just a university for Krishna consciousness. It’s not an academy for Krishna consciousness. It’s a society.

And that’s why the social fabric also is important. Now, in general, when women don’t want to get married or have children, there are many reasons for that. And those reasons may at an individual level need to be understood and addressed.

Especially if we are closely connecting with someone and training them or guiding them on the path of bhakti. However, at a broad level, I’ve seen there are three main reasons. One is that women may have had bad experience with men and they feel that no man can be trusted.

Second is that they feel marriage and motherhood are basically going to inhibit them, restrict them from having a full life. Maybe they are very ambitious in their career. They will be constricted in that.

And third is that they feel that that kind of role, that gender role of being a wife and a mother is a part of a patriarchal social structure. And they don’t want to be a part of that. So, it could be more of a personal emotional reason.

It could be a more professional reason. And it could be a more intellectual, philosophical, ideological reason. So, if it’s a personal emotional, if it’s more like an emotional psychological reason, then it’s going to take some time to heal.

Probably, if they see examples of stable marriages in the community, no marriage is without conflicts and problems, but there is also a cultured and dignified way to deal with the conflicts and problems. And maybe they have to practice bhakti for some time and they have to see how there is a possibility for healthy and happy marriages to work. And gradually, maybe by seeing men who are not just out to exploit women, but who are actually God-conscious men, gradually their faith in the male side of humanity will be restored.

We cannot force this process. Second is that they feel it will impede them professionally. And yes, there is truth to that.

At the same time, we have to think what actually brings fulfillment in life. From the Vedic perspective, there is varna and ashram both. So, broadly varna refers to our talents and our career and our contribution accordingly within the career.

And ashram refers to our relationship and what kind of focus we have within our relationships. So, basically, fulfilling human life requires both connection and contribution. Now, biology has designed humanity in such a way that the males focus more on contribution in terms of going out into the world and working.

And women focus more on connecting, keeping the whole family together, having children, connecting with the children. And traditionally, women could also do some varna. The idea that women should not have jobs or that is against Vedic culture is not an idea that is supported by Vedic culture.

The gopis themselves would sell butter and curd and other things. In Krishnalaya, there is the fruit vendor lady. But the point is that in general, for a woman, the ashram is more important than the varna.

In the past, women, whatever jobs they were able to do, whatever work they were able to do, women might have some talents, they might do some things. They were able to do it in a way that they also took care of the family. Of course, in the past, we could say life was tougher.

Much of the work outside was much more physically demanding work. And the male body was more suited for that. But anyway, historically, as things change, especially the post-industrial revolution and everything, jobs started going far away from homes, cottage industries went away.

And women had to basically choose between ashram and varna. And biology forced them to choose ashram. Because once you have children, you have to take care of children.

Then, over a period of time, resentment started coming up. And as feminism, as ideology developed, and as technology developed, through various means, birth control pills, abortion and other things, then women got an opportunity to subordinate biology. So that they could pursue varna while at the cost of ashram.

Over a period of time, now it has been made that women should focus only on varna, and ashram is not at all important. You can be happy on your own. You don’t need a family.

You don’t need anybody else to take care of you. It may well be true that a woman can go through life on its own. But nobody can be fully satisfied with only a career.

Even if you ask most men, even high-performing men who are very professionally successful, why are they doing it? They may say they want prestige in society, they want power, and all that is true. But at the end of it, they are doing it for the family. So, even the male heart cannot be satisfied only with a career.

So, women have been uniquely gifted by nature, by biology, ultimately by God, with a capacity to nurture. Women have a more well-developed emotional side, by which even when small babies who are not at all rational in their behavior can be taken care of very well by a woman much more than a man. Men will be very rational and will just not be able to deal with babies whose behavior is largely irrational.

So, the woman’s greater emotionality is also a gift. And we all have a need to nurture, that take care of someone else. And ultimately the choice is that will we be something for everyone or everything for someone.

What do I mean by something for everyone? Something for everyone means somebody becomes a manager in a company, somebody becomes a career woman. Well, from the corporate perspective, whether it is for your colleagues or whether it is for your clients, you are replaceable. If you are not there, somebody will replace you.

You will become something for everyone. Or you become everything for someone. For a newborn child, a mother is everything.

And that need to nurture is very much there within us. It is there for men, it is there for women. And many times when somebody chooses not to have a baby, they end up adopting a pet and taking care of that pet and lavishing all their affection on the pet.

So, this is not a criticism of pets at all. It is just that the need to nurture cannot be denied. And by the age of 40, 45, 50, one can start feeling extremely lonely and empty in their lives.

Now, is it possible that one can enter into a relationship and the relationship can go south and one may end up in the same place? Yes, that’s also possible. That’s a risk. No, nothing in life comes without risks.

So, one needs to be careful about what kind of relationship one enters into. But the notion that marriage and motherhood will restrict a woman professionally, it’s a very one-sided idea because we are not defined by our profession alone. A holistic life requires various things and relationships are also a very important part of that.

So, many times a woman can pursue her career after her children have grown up a little bit. And maybe the years that were invested, some people will say lost in taking care of children, but invested in taking care of children, maybe that means they will not rise as much in their career as much as they would have. But they will have a more fulfilling life.

A few decades, feminism arose about 200 years ago. A few decades or even a few centuries of ideology cannot overturn the history of humanity. And the idea is that women lose autonomy.

Women come under the control of a man. And that’s not necessary. It depends on how the marriage works out.

And the idea of autonomy itself is highly overrated. It is before say 300, 400, 500 years ago, even men did not have much autonomy. For most people, whether in India or the caste system, in the West it was the class system, whichever family you were born in, that’s what your career would be in future.

If somebody was born a peasant, then they would probably be a peasant. If somebody was born a barber, what we call upward mobility was very much absent in feudal society. So men also did not have much autonomy.

A few men who might be in royalty or aristocracy had power. And sometimes a few women also had power, maybe lesser. So the idea that autonomy is lost, yes, autonomy is lost.

But sometimes the loss of autonomy is what brings intimacy. It is what brings community. It is what actually the human heart doesn’t just want to be free.

We want to be free and we also want to belong. We also want to love and be loved. So that’s more at a professional level.

And the last part is at an ideological level also. Are you joining a patriarchy? And you want to rebel against patriarchy? Well, ultimately we all want to be happy. And has a patriarchal society led to some problems? Yes, it has led to problems.

And are there ways to correct that? I think every family finds their own way of negotiating relationships. Maybe in the past it was more like a top-down kind of thing. The man was in charge and the woman listened to the man.

But even if you look at history, women always had a voice. And in today’s world, it is not that when a woman gets married, she is going to have to enter into some rigidly patriarchal family structure. Each husband and wife will find out the dynamic with which their relationship works the best.

Society today is very different from the way it was in the past. Just as we can’t parent our children the way our parents parented us. So a husband-wife relationship today will also not be the same way it was 30 or 50 years ago.

So now, having said this, the last point to make is that ultimately, we should not force people to make a particular choice. That we can encourage people, we can try to answer their questions, address their reservations. And after that, it’s up to them.

If a woman doesn’t want to get married, she should not be guilted by constant social pressure into marriage. Now, it should not be assumed that she will be a threat to other families, other men in the community. It may be, it may not be also.

So, is our society evolved to that much extent? And some people may not even consider evolution. But we need to be able to accommodate everyone in Krishna Bhakti. And how exactly that will happen? It depends.

Many churches have… Churches, especially the protestant churches, don’t accept the idea of either monks or nuns. Catholics do for both. But protestants, they have neither.

But still they have forums for single women, even single mothers also. And as our society integrates with mainstream society, or at least starts needing to function within the way the mainstream society is, such support structures may also be created. But on one side, we need to… we can’t force somebody to do something because if things go wrong thereafter, then they’ll blame us.

And it’s not just that they’ll blame us. We don’t want to be just… I don’t want to be blamed, that’s why I won’t get married. But it’s that everybody has individual choice.

Having said that, we also need to alert people that we are a traditional society. We are an old tradition. And we are a part of an old tradition that has survived for thousands of years.

And because it’s an old tradition, it’s not going to change quickly. And if you really want to be a part of something time-tested, you wouldn’t want it to change every five minutes. So therefore, there will be certain lack of acceptance or a certain level of lesser acceptance that they may encounter if they choose to stay single consciously.

Maybe there will be some communities which will be more accepting and some communities which will be utterly non-accepting. Each community within the broader Krishna Consciousness movement will have its own ethos. So, Krishna Consciousness doesn’t depend on a person getting married or having children, even a woman getting married or having children.

But one’s role and one’s respectability in a community, in a particular community, may be affected by that. And one may need to be ready to accept that and keep one’s relationship with Krishna as a higher priority and still move on in that path. So, to summarize, three things.

First is, if a woman doesn’t want to marry because she’s been psychologically scarred, then first is that we should not make them think that they can’t practice Krishna Consciousness without getting married or having children. Second is that, if they’ve been psychologically scarred, then they’ve been given time to heal the scars by seeing stable families and trustworthy men who are actually devoted to God and are not simply waiting for a chance to exploit women. If they have some professional reservations, then maybe we need to help them to see what actually makes for a fulfilling life.

It’s not just a career. It’s not just a contribution to our career, but it’s also a connection through family. If they have ideological reservations about feminism, then we need to know that feminism is actually a historically untested ideology, especially radical feminism.

And humanity has worked in a particular way. And while we want autonomy, we also want intimacy and community. And there’s a price for that.

And lastly, we tell them that it’s up to… you can practice Krishna Consciousness in whatever way you want. At the same time, because we are a part of an old tradition and things don’t change rapidly, nor should they in a time-honored tradition. Therefore, they may encounter a certain level of non-appreciation and they need to be ready for that.

Maybe they can find a community where that non-appreciation is lesser. Krishna Consciousness also has many versions based on the ethos of a particular community. They can find a place in Krishna Consciousness, but they may not find a place in a particular community in Krishna Consciousness.