Background characteristics of respondents
Two hundred (200) respondents were interviewed for this study. The study involved 107 men representing 53.5% and 93 women representing 46.6%. Respondents’ age ranged between 15-54 for men and 15-49 for women. In all, over seventy percent (76.5%) had some form of education ranging from primary to tertiary while (23.5%) had no education. All the respondents were involved in some kind of work with over sixty percent (66%) being artisans.
Knowledge of Family Planning.
Majority of the men respondents (95.5%) had heard of FP. Almost half of the respondents (48.1%) had information about FP via the mass media (Television, Radio and Newspaper) followed by friends (27.5%) and the health facility (23.5%) as indicated in Table 1.
Table 1: Source of Information on family planning
Source
|
Frequency
|
Percent (%)
|
Television
|
17
|
16.7
|
Radio
|
30
|
29.4
|
Newspaper
|
2
|
2.0
|
Internet
|
1
|
0.9
|
Friends
|
28
|
27.5
|
Health facility
|
24
|
23.5
|
Total
|
102
|
100.0
|
Twenty eight percent (28.0%) of the men interviewed understood FP as avoidance of unintended pregnancy, 25.2% as limiting family size while 19.6% understood it as spacing of childbirth. Others (27.1 %) explained it as two or more of the above definitions as shown in table 2. The most common method known and used was the condom (42.5%) followed by implants (32.0%) and the least known method being the foam tablet (7.0%) among men respondents.
Table 2: Men understanding of meaning of family planning.
Meaning
|
Frequency
|
Percent (%)
|
Limiting family size
|
27
|
25.2
|
To avoid unintended pregnancy
|
30
|
28.0
|
Spacing childbirth
|
21
|
19.6
|
Others
|
29
|
27.1
|
Total
|
107
|
99.9
|
Men involvement in FP
Over fifty percent (52.2%) of the men respondents reported they or their partner were currently using some form of contraceptives to delay or avoid pregnancy. However only 36.4% of women reported they or their partner were currently using contraceptives to delay or avoid pregnancy. Majority of the men respondents (72.8%) approved of the use of FP methods by their partners, 75% of the women respondents also indicated their partners had approved of their use of FP. The findings also indicate that men had a higher propensity of reporting FP use (X2 =4.5534, p= 0.033). For the couples who did not approve of the FP methods, the reasons included: socio-cultural beliefs (31%), side effects (30.8%) and others (38.5%).
Decision making in FP use
We wanted to know from the women whether their partners support them in their desire to use contraceptives; 67.0% of the women answered in the affirmative and 33.0% answered in a negative. Those who answered in the affirmative said their partners support them by providing money for transport to facility and/or for FP services, encouraging and accompanying them to the health facility. Women who reported that their spouse support FP use were more likely to use a contraceptive method (X2 = 9.5223, P=0.002) compared to those who said no. Women who reported their partners had some education were also more likely to use a contraceptive method (X2=14.1133, P=0.000).
Generally, a greater proportion of men (77.6 %) intend using FP in the future. For those who answered in a negative, 19.1% said most of the contraceptives were designed to suit women and thought it was a woman’s business. Nearly three quarters of women (73.4%) who ever used a FP method indicated their partner had a say in the decision to use. For the women interviewed,70.7% said they would still practice birth control irrespective of their partners’ opinion while 23.9% would not use birth control if their partners were against it, 5.4% were however were not certain.