For a mother who is a sex worker, the fear is not necessarily that the law will automatically take her child away. It is that someone else may interpret her work as evidence that she is an unfit parent.
“People decide what kind of mother she is before they see how she treats her kids,” says Prarthana Pai, a psychotherapist and a PhD researcher in Health Psychology. “There’s a gap between who she really is with her kids and who people think she is.”
Indian law, however, draws a considerably more nuanced line between a parent’s occupation and a child’s welfare. “There is no general rule in Indian law that a woman loses her parental or custodial rights merely because she is a sex worker,” says Shreya Sharma, Founder and CEO of Rest The Case.
In custody matters, the governing principle is the welfare and best interests of the child. Section 17 of the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890 requires courts to consider factors including the child’s age, the proposed guardian’s character and capacity, existing relationships and, where appropriate, the child’s preference.
Advocate Shiv Pratap Singh, a Women and Child Rights lawyer, says the same parameters should apply irrespective of the parent’s profession.
These include the parent’s ability to provide for the child, the emotional bond between parent and child, the child’s preference where they are sufficiently mature, the child’s education, health and nutrition, and whether the child is actually exposed to unsafe conditions.
“Courts are expected to test claims of risk against evidence, not stigma,” Singh says.
When occupation becomes a custody argument
A spouse or family member can raise a mother’s sex work as an issue during a custody dispute, but raising it and proving that it makes her unfit are two different things.
“The person seeking custody would ordinarily have to demonstrate facts relevant to the child’s welfare, such as neglect, abuse, exploitation, unsafe living conditions, exposure to trafficking or violence, inability to provide appropriate care, or some other concrete harm,” says Sharma.
The distinction is critical. Sex work itself is not proof of any of these circumstances. “The important distinction is between sex work as an occupation and circumstances that actually endanger the child,” Sharma adds.
Singh similarly says that documented instances of neglect or abuse, medical or school records, counsellor reports or other evidence of child-specific harm would be materially different from a claim based simply on the mother’s occupation.
The Supreme Court addressed precisely this issue in Budhadev Karmaskar v. State of West Bengal. In its May 2022 directions, the Court recognised the dignity and constitutional rights of sex workers and directed authorities to ensure that children of sex workers were not separated from their mothers merely because of their occupation. It also said that children found living with sex workers should not automatically be presumed to have been trafficked.
For Sharma, this makes Budhadev Karmaskar an important safeguard against assumptions entering custody decisions. “The Supreme Court’s approach in Budhadev Karmaskar is particularly relevant: the Court rejected the presumption that a minor living with sex workers has necessarily been trafficked and directed that children should not be forcibly separated merely because of their association with sex workers,” she says.
The law has moved beyond the morality test
The issue has acquired fresh relevance following the Supreme Court’s 2026 judgment in Prajwala v. Union of India, which dealt extensively with the distinction between trafficking and voluntary adult sex work.
The judgment is significant because it challenges the tendency to treat voluntary adult sex work as evidence of moral failure.
For mothers, that distinction can be particularly consequential. A woman’s occupation can become a proxy for assumptions about her character, sexuality and ability to raise a child. “The biggest mistake is treating a woman’s job and her character as the same thing, as if what she does for money tells you who she is as a parent,” says Pai. This assumption can have consequences well beyond custody proceedings.
The rights may exist on paper. Access is another matter.
For children of sex workers, discrimination does not necessarily arrive in the form of a court order. It can begin with documentation.
“The practical problem can therefore be less about a legal prohibition and more about proof of parentage, address, father’s details, identity documents and administrative forms,” Sharma says.
The Supreme Court has previously acknowledged difficulties faced by sex workers in obtaining identity documents and directed authorities to facilitate access to documents while maintaining confidentiality.
The Registration of Births and Deaths (Amendment) Act, 2023 also expressly provides for registration of the birth of a child to a single parent or an unwed mother.
Education presents another point of friction. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 prohibits screening procedures for admission and sets out protections against denial of admission. More specifically, the Supreme Court’s directions in Budhadev Karmaskar case addressed the education of children of sex workers.
In Maharashtra, the government had earlier issued directions to schools not to insist on the father’s name or address proof in cases involving children of sex workers.
Sharma says this demonstrates the distinction between formal rights and their implementation. “A school cannot lawfully deny a child’s entitlement to education merely because the child’s mother is a sex worker,” she says. “Depending on the circumstances, remedies can include approaching the school authorities, education department/local education authority, RTE grievance mechanisms, State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, or courts.”
Yet the need for such interventions points to a larger problem: families may avoid institutions altogether because they fear what disclosure could bring.
The psychological cost
For sex-worker mothers, the fear of losing custody can become a form of chronic anxiety.
“It got bad enough that the Supreme Court had to say this out loud in 2022, in the Budhadev Karmaskar case, that sex workers and their children have the same basic rights and dignity as anyone else,” says Pai. “When a court has to spell that out, you know how deep the assumption runs.”
She describes the fear of custody loss as something that can prevent mothers from ever feeling secure. “Living with that fear all the time means a mother never really relaxes. There is always this lingering fear, about the child being taken away.”
A 2024 scoping review of research on sex workers who are parents or caregivers identified five recurring themes: social stigma and healthcare discrimination, legal challenges, mental-health concerns, risks associated with children’s environments, and the importance of social support. The review found that children can face bullying and discrimination, while mothers may experience anxiety, depression and social isolation linked to persistent stigma and pressure.
For many mothers, stigma becomes another layer of vulnerability.
“A lot of these women have already dealt with police, hospitals, courts, places where the moment they mentioned their work, that became the only thing anyone saw,” Pai says. “So of course therapy feels risky too.”
She argues that mental-health professionals need to distinguish between the mother’s occupation and the actual problem bringing a family into therapy. “If a kid is being bullied or feels ashamed, help them with that, don’t quietly suggest the real problem is what their mother does for a living,” she says.
Children can end up carrying the stigma themselves
The consequences of social judgment can also be passed down to children.
Children may gradually become aware of their mother’s occupation through conversations, gossip, bullying or interactions with adults.
“Kids don’t find out in one big moment,” says Pai. “They piece it together slowly, from what they see, what they overhear, what other kids in the same lane say to tease them.”
That can create a difficult split between the mother a child knows and the mother society describes.
“They’re stuck trying to make sense of two very different mothers, the one they actually know, who’s familiar, and the one the world talks about like she’s something shameful,” Pai says.
Children may respond in different ways. Some hide information about their families. Others become angry or socially withdrawn.
“And some, even quite young, start acting like they need to protect their mother, taking on a kind of caretaker role that no child should have to carry,” Pai says.
A 2025 study of mothers and children living in an urban red-light district found that mothers were concerned about income generation, education and their children’s living arrangements, while children prioritised education and described the neighbourhood as unsafe and dirty. The researchers also highlighted the structural barriers facing families, including poverty, housing insecurity, food insecurity, inadequate sanitation, limited educational opportunities and stigma.
What about adoption?
The same legal principle applies when the question is adoption. Sex work is not expressly listed as an automatic disqualification under India’s adoption framework. Under the Juvenile Justice Act, prospective adoptive parents are assessed on factors including their physical and mental fitness, financial capacity and motivation to provide a good upbringing. The Adoption Regulations, 2022 also provide for a Home Study Report examining the prospective parent’s circumstances, lifestyle, home environment and readiness for parenting.
That does not mean an applicant’s occupation can never become relevant. It means that the assessment should focus on whether the person can provide a safe and stable environment rather than treating a profession as an automatic bar.
“There is no blanket statutory prohibition on a sex worker adopting solely because of her occupation,” says Sharma.
But she acknowledges the potential for discretion to become a site of bias.
“The distinction is important: the question is whether the applicant can provide a safe and stable upbringing, not whether the applicant belongs to a particular occupation.”
The implementation gap
If India’s legal position is increasingly clear, why does the fear persist? Because formal equality does not necessarily mean lived equality.
Sharma identifies several practical barriers: lack of proof of residence or identity, forms that assume the existence of a father or husband, stigma from officials, reluctance by institutions to accept alternative documentation, fear of disclosure and inadequate awareness of judicial directions.
Singh similarly points to the gap between legal rights and their implementation, arguing that informal moral assumptions can influence how police, welfare officials and school administrators treat sex workers.
The result is a peculiar contradiction: a mother may have a legal right but still feel compelled to hide the very circumstances that make accessing that right difficult.
Pai has seen this play out in education as well. “Every school form, every question from a relative, becomes something the family has to carefully manage,” she says. “Kids learn very early which parts of their life they’re allowed to talk about.”
Motherhood should not require proving respectability
The legal evolution is clear. Budhadev Karmaskar established that children should not be separated from their mothers merely because those mothers are sex workers. The Supreme Court’s more recent Prajwala judgment further reinforces the distinction between voluntary adult sex work and trafficking, while cautioning against stigma becoming a substitute for legal analysis.
But the deeper challenge is cultural. A sex worker does not stop being a mother because she works in a stigmatised profession. Her child does not become less deserving of education, documentation or dignity. And a custody dispute should not become a referendum on whether society considers her respectable.
“The biggest mistake is treating a woman’s job and her character as the same thing,” Pai says.
Sharma puts the legal position more simply: “Occupation alone should not be treated as an automatic disqualification from motherhood or custody.”
The question, ultimately, should not be whether a sex worker is a “good” mother by society’s standards.
It should be the same question asked of every parent: Is the child safe, cared for, loved, and able to grow and thrive? Anything beyond that risks turning stigma into evidence.