These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Knowledge, attitude and practice of family planning in Eastern Nigeria: implications, prospects and suggestions.
    Author: Uche C, Ekanem II.
    Journal: Sociologus; 1982; 32(2):97-126. PubMed ID: 12265689.
    Abstract:
    Despite high birthrates in most of Nigeria, government population and development policies stress economic development rather than attempts to reduce fertility. Findings on family planning knowledge, attitude, and practice from a national fertility and family planning survey conducted by the former Institute of Population and Manpower Studies of the University of Ife in 1972 are presented for 1725 Eastern Nigerian households. A total of 1839 currently married women aged 10-49 and 1585 of their husbands responded to questions about 14 contraceptive methods divided into 3 categories: folk (withdrawal, douche, breastfeeding, and abstinence), traditional (condom, diaphragm, foam, rhythm, jelly, suppositories, sponge) and modern (pill, IUD, and injectables). On the whole, husbands had greater knowledge of traditional and modern methods, while wives knew more about folk methods, regardless of residence. Wives began to approximate the knowledge level of their husbands with increasing education. Fewer than 17% of husbands or wives of any education or residence category could explain the use of modern methods. Female respondents agreed that children now had greater odds of surviving to adulthood than a generation or more ago, but 54.6% in urban areas and 58.7% in rural areas disapproved any kind of birth control. About 42.5% of urban women and 29.3% of rural women approved of birth control. 42.8% of the women felt that families have become smaller than in the past, while 37.4% felt they were larger. The mean desired family size was 5.9 in urban areas and 8.2 in rural, and did not differ significantly by education. Family size was found to be positively associated with desire for more children. Almost 3/4 of women in urban and rural areas wanted more children. Among husbands, 66.8% reported ever using folk methods, 29.9% traditional methods, and 4.2% modern methods, while among wives, 73.3% reported ever using folk methods, 22.6% traditional methods, and 4.1% modern methods. Because the expressed desired family size is larger than the observed completed family size, it appears unlikely that family planning by itself will provide a solution to the population problem in Eastern Nigeria. The prevailing early marriage age, the lack of socially rewarding alternative life goals for women besides motherhood, the still high infant and child mortality levels, the lack of an ideal contraceptive method, and the lack of antinatalist political leadership do not augur well for the spread of family planning. The ideal population control strategy would combine mass education, establishment of maternal and child health programs, and cooperation from developed countries.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]