Section
Married Men’s Involvement in Family Planning – A Study from Coastal Southern India
Community Medicine
DOI: 10.7860/JCDR/2015/12101.5837
Original Article
Rekha T1, Unnikrishnan B2, Prasanna P Mithra3, Nithin Kumar4, Ramesh Holla5, Vishal Raina6, Hisham Hashim7, Prakhar Singh8
ABSTRACT Background: Over the years, India has emerged as one of the most populous countries in the world, next only to China. Unregulated fertility can compromise the economic development and political stability of a country. Family planning was always thought to be a woman’s prerogative, especially in a male dominant society like India. Consequently, most of the studies on family planning focused on women as the subject of interest. Purpose: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning amongst men who have been married for at least five years. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in the teaching hospitals of Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore; India among 156 men who had been married for at least five years. They were selected using
non-random sampling method and were interviewed using a pretested semi structured validated questionnaire. Chi-square test was used for statistical analyses. Results: Overall, 75.6% were aged between 26 and 34 years, 41.7% had one child, 92.3% subjects from upper and 86.9% from lower socio-economic status were aware about the male family planning services available in the market. Most husbands preferred that their spouse should be sterilized (53.8%). Family planning methods were actively practiced by 71.2 %. Conclusion: Most of the studies on family planning have focused mainly on females. This study throws light on the male perspective of family planning. Our study subjects were well aware about various family planning services and their attitude towards family planning was favorable, but the number of men practicing family planning was not high.
Keywords: Attitudes, India, Knowledge, Male
INTRODUCTION A rapid population growth is a burden on the resources of many developing countries like India [1]. Currently, India is the second most populous country in the world, contributing about 20% of births worldwide [2]. Unregulated fertility, can compromise the economic development and political stability of a country. Many international institutions and organizations have strongly advocated family planning for controlling the unregulated births. Even though many studies have been conducted in this field, the demographic research has focused on the determinants of contraception used by women [3]. Despite India being the first country to launch a National Family Planning Program in 1952, there are still 13% of married women with unmet needs in regard to family planning (NFHS III). Family planning was always thought to be a woman’s prerogative, especially in a male dominant society like India and most of the studies on family planning in developing countries have long focused on women as the subject of interest. Very little work in this area has focused on men. But the fact is that both men and women are equally responsible for planning and regulating the family size. It is now increasingly recognized that the actions required to achieve improvements in family planning should also encourage the active participation of men, hence exploring the role of husband’s contraceptive practices is particularly important [4]. Male involvement also includes the number of men who encourage and support their partner and peers to use family planning and who influence the policy environment to be more conducive to developing male-related programs [5]. The male involvement includes not only male contraception but also all the other national program activities which works towards 4
increasing the awareness, acceptability and prevalence of family planning methods among the males. The usage of modern methods of contraception offer many advantages to the health and economy of both the couple and the country. The primary aim of family planning enables women and men to plan their families and space their children through the use of modern contraceptives. However, family planning also embraces activities such as infertility, genetic counseling, contraception, abortion and sterilization. Of late, with an increasing awareness about HIV/AIDS, there has been a rise in condom promotion and usage which in turn leads to family planning. This usage in turn is influenced by the awareness and attitudes of the people of reproductive age group and in particular the male partners. But this has been rarely studied and given importance to [1]. Hence, in this study we assessed the knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning amongst men who have been married for five years.
MATERIALS AND METHODS This cross-sectional study was carried out in the teaching hospitals of Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore (Manipal University) in the month of February 2012 among men who had been married for at least 5 years. The sample size was calculated as 156,with an anticipated level of men following family planning methods as 55% [1], 85% power, 15% absolute precision, 95% confidence interval and 10% non-response error. After obtaining clearance from the Institution Ethics Committee, the hospitals were visited on a preinformed date. The subjects were selected using convenient, non-random sampling technique. Those eligible subjects who were present in the hospital during the time of data collection as by-standers for Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research. 2015 Apr, Vol-9(4): LC04-LC07
www.jcdr.net
Rekha T et al., Men and Family Planning
their spouses and children or seeking health care for themselves were approached. They were explained the nature and objectives of the study in a language which they could clearly understand and written informed consent was obtained from each of them. Those who refused to give consent were excluded from the study. Subjects were approached till the required sample size was achieved.
Statistical analysis The data collection was done using a pre-tested semi structured validated questionnaire which consisted of sections on knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning of the men. The collected data was coded and entered in SPSS version 11.5. Comparison across the groups was done using chi-square test and p-
Married Men’s Involvement in Family Planning – A Study from Coastal Southern India
Community Medicine
DOI: 10.7860/JCDR/2015/12101.5837
Original Article
Rekha T1, Unnikrishnan B2, Prasanna P Mithra3, Nithin Kumar4, Ramesh Holla5, Vishal Raina6, Hisham Hashim7, Prakhar Singh8
ABSTRACT Background: Over the years, India has emerged as one of the most populous countries in the world, next only to China. Unregulated fertility can compromise the economic development and political stability of a country. Family planning was always thought to be a woman’s prerogative, especially in a male dominant society like India. Consequently, most of the studies on family planning focused on women as the subject of interest. Purpose: To assess the knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning amongst men who have been married for at least five years. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in the teaching hospitals of Kasturba Medical College (Manipal University), Mangalore; India among 156 men who had been married for at least five years. They were selected using
non-random sampling method and were interviewed using a pretested semi structured validated questionnaire. Chi-square test was used for statistical analyses. Results: Overall, 75.6% were aged between 26 and 34 years, 41.7% had one child, 92.3% subjects from upper and 86.9% from lower socio-economic status were aware about the male family planning services available in the market. Most husbands preferred that their spouse should be sterilized (53.8%). Family planning methods were actively practiced by 71.2 %. Conclusion: Most of the studies on family planning have focused mainly on females. This study throws light on the male perspective of family planning. Our study subjects were well aware about various family planning services and their attitude towards family planning was favorable, but the number of men practicing family planning was not high.
Keywords: Attitudes, India, Knowledge, Male
INTRODUCTION A rapid population growth is a burden on the resources of many developing countries like India [1]. Currently, India is the second most populous country in the world, contributing about 20% of births worldwide [2]. Unregulated fertility, can compromise the economic development and political stability of a country. Many international institutions and organizations have strongly advocated family planning for controlling the unregulated births. Even though many studies have been conducted in this field, the demographic research has focused on the determinants of contraception used by women [3]. Despite India being the first country to launch a National Family Planning Program in 1952, there are still 13% of married women with unmet needs in regard to family planning (NFHS III). Family planning was always thought to be a woman’s prerogative, especially in a male dominant society like India and most of the studies on family planning in developing countries have long focused on women as the subject of interest. Very little work in this area has focused on men. But the fact is that both men and women are equally responsible for planning and regulating the family size. It is now increasingly recognized that the actions required to achieve improvements in family planning should also encourage the active participation of men, hence exploring the role of husband’s contraceptive practices is particularly important [4]. Male involvement also includes the number of men who encourage and support their partner and peers to use family planning and who influence the policy environment to be more conducive to developing male-related programs [5]. The male involvement includes not only male contraception but also all the other national program activities which works towards 4
increasing the awareness, acceptability and prevalence of family planning methods among the males. The usage of modern methods of contraception offer many advantages to the health and economy of both the couple and the country. The primary aim of family planning enables women and men to plan their families and space their children through the use of modern contraceptives. However, family planning also embraces activities such as infertility, genetic counseling, contraception, abortion and sterilization. Of late, with an increasing awareness about HIV/AIDS, there has been a rise in condom promotion and usage which in turn leads to family planning. This usage in turn is influenced by the awareness and attitudes of the people of reproductive age group and in particular the male partners. But this has been rarely studied and given importance to [1]. Hence, in this study we assessed the knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning amongst men who have been married for five years.
MATERIALS AND METHODS This cross-sectional study was carried out in the teaching hospitals of Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore (Manipal University) in the month of February 2012 among men who had been married for at least 5 years. The sample size was calculated as 156,with an anticipated level of men following family planning methods as 55% [1], 85% power, 15% absolute precision, 95% confidence interval and 10% non-response error. After obtaining clearance from the Institution Ethics Committee, the hospitals were visited on a preinformed date. The subjects were selected using convenient, non-random sampling technique. Those eligible subjects who were present in the hospital during the time of data collection as by-standers for Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research. 2015 Apr, Vol-9(4): LC04-LC07
www.jcdr.net
Rekha T et al., Men and Family Planning
their spouses and children or seeking health care for themselves were approached. They were explained the nature and objectives of the study in a language which they could clearly understand and written informed consent was obtained from each of them. Those who refused to give consent were excluded from the study. Subjects were approached till the required sample size was achieved.
Statistical analysis The data collection was done using a pre-tested semi structured validated questionnaire which consisted of sections on knowledge, attitude and practices of family planning of the men. The collected data was coded and entered in SPSS version 11.5. Comparison across the groups was done using chi-square test and p-
