Family planning is often referred to as hormonal birth control, which is  the control of children in a family and of the interval between them, especially by the use of contraceptives. It can also be defined as the concept of limiting the size of a family through the spacing or prevention of pregnancies, especially for economic reasons.

Family planning methods:
Abstinence: The only 100 percent effective way to avoid becoming pregnant is to abstain completely from sexual intercourse.

Barrier methods: These provide physical barriers that keep the sperm from entering the uterus. They include male and female condoms, the diaphragm, and the cervical cap.

Hormonal contraceptives: Deliver doses of female sex hormones. These inhibits ovulation, thickens the mucus of the cervix to make it difficult for sperm to enter the uterus, and keep the uterine lining from thickening so that fertilized egg cannot implant in it. The doses are administered as pills, skin implants, or injection.

Spermicides: They are jellies, creams, frams, suppositories, tablets or films that contain a sperm-killing chemical.

Natural methods: These apply purely natural means for birth control. They include the “rhythm method and early withdrawal.”

Surgery: A vasectomy is a minor surgical procedure done on a man that prevents pregnancy by blocking the passage of sperm into seminal fluid. A tubal ligation is a permanent form of sterilization for a woman. Both of these procedures are permanent and irreversible.

Intra-Uterine Device (IUD): This is a small plastic device inserted in to the uterus. It may be coupled with the use of hormones or other materials. IUD can interfere with the ability of sperm to fertilize an egg, and prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the lining of the uterus.

Calendar planning: By tracking her cycle, a woman can accurately predict when her most fertile time of the month is and avoid intercourse during those days. When done correctly, it is effective about 98 per cent of the time.

Induced Abortion: This is the termination of pregnancy before birth. It normally result in the death of foetus.

Purpose of family planning:
Raising a child requires significant amounts of resources; time, social, financial, and environmental. Planning can help assume that resources are available.

Health: Waiting until the mother is at least 18 years old before trying to have children improves maternal and child health. Also, if additional children are desired after a child is born, it is healthier for the mother  to wail at least two years after the previous birth before attempting to conceive (but not more than five years). After a miscarriage or abortion, it is healthier to wait at least six months.
Advantages of family planning

According to the California Department of Health Services Office of Family Planning, family planning reduces the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions among women, and allows women the opportunity to choose when the time is right to have a child. Family planning gives women option to wait until they are financially able to care for a child, and gives them time to pursue educational and employment goals without worrying about financial burden of an unplanned pregnancy.

Disadvantages
The side effects of hormonal birth control’ may stand out as disadvantages for some women. While  many women regularly use contraception without experiencing side effects, complications can and do occur. The most common side effects associated with hormonal contraception include weight gain, headaches, dizziness and nausea. Less common but more serious side effects include stroke, blood clots and ectopic pregnancy.

Though natural family planning poses no health risks, this method is among the least effective at preventing pregnancy, according to the National Women’s Health Information Centre. Out of 100 women who use natural family planning, approximately 25 will become pregnant.

The tributaries (social perspective)
Family Planning has several implications depending on the social background. Community and culture affect a person’s attitude towards family planning, desired sex of children, preferences about family size, family pressures to have  children and whether family planning accords with customs and religious beliefs. Child spacing is greatly valued in rural societies, as it is in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, women in particular prize it, but abstinence is regarded as the preferred means of assuring long birth intervals because of the traditional belief in the incompatibility of mother’s milk with semen.

In some traditional African culture, it is observed that many women reject contraception because bearing and raising children is the path to respect and dignity in the society, husbands tend to want larger families than do their wives.

Research on people’s belief and view on family planning.

In Naga, if you want to have ten children, you can do that, but you  need to make sure there are intervals between the births. Even  when you tell your husband that you would not like to have another child (yet), he will tell you that he paid your bride wealth to bear children and build his house for him.

• In the Gambia,  men’s anxieties may arise from a difference in the reproductive strategies of men and women. A woman may wish to delay her next birth not only because she desires to protect her health and that of her children but also because she wants to keep her reproductive and conjugal options open (her husband may think that “she must be saving [it] for someone else).”
• Studies in Kenya and Zambia have revealed that women are afraid to ask their husbands’ permission to use a family planning method; if they practice family planning without their husbands’ consent will cause a lot of conflict in such marriage.
• If a woman goes [to obtain a method] without informing the man and she gets a problem, they will say the woman has brought in a taboo believing that when the woman or the child dies it is the fault ofthe doctors.
In Ghana your wife adopts a method and now feels confident that she will not get pregnant again, making women to become flirts-going after men outside their marriage.
• In Uganda, disagreement between husbands and wives carries a high social cost, including violence, divorce, or a husband’s “bringing in” another wife
• In Nigeria and other West African Countries some women said that, it was difficult for them to use family planning because their relatives or friends were not using it. If caught using a contraceptive without the husbands approval gets the woman out of her matrimony
• Some women also fear that their husbands’ disapproval of contraceptive use can lead to withholding affection or sex or their preference for another wife or divorce.
Since the various contraceptives that can be used to prevent a pregnancy have their side effects. If a woman comes to adopt a method without first informing her husband and later on develops a health problem, it worries the husband and the husband could end up beating her. Wife-beating is also perceived as legitimate if a woman fails to cook for her children or travels without her husband’s permission in local African culture.

Due to low earnings of Nigerian people, some find it difficult to afford the bills for this medication; husbands in the rural areas prefer to wine and dine with friends than paying for such. Although the amounts seem small, the emotional costs of pursuing these negotiations can be great.

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