Male attitudes towards family planning in Accra Ghana.
1990
150 men aged 45 years and younger were interviewed February-March 1989 in Mamprobi and Chorkor suburbs of Accra about their knowledge attitudes and practices relating to family planning. There were of mean age 33.1 145 married and five widowed or divorced. Seven married men had two or more wives and 130 men had one or more children with the mean number of living children for the sample being 2.58. Their responses indicate the existence of an interest in and a demand for family planning services for both men and their wives. The men overwhelmingly approved of contraceptive use by their spouses but they also expressed some fears about womens use of family planning. They reported that 34% of their wives had used modern contraception at one time while 59.3% of the men had used a condom at some time. Only 8.7% of the participants were opposed to their wives using contraception and 10.7% said that they would not personally use condoms. Mens fears about womens use of family planning are based in their broad belief that women using contraception will have extramarital affairs. Almost 66% felt that family planning promoted promiscuity with 29.3% of men feeling that a majority of women if allowed to use contraception would have extramarital affairs. Most men were also in favor of using condoms with almost half recognizing that condoms can prevent AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. All but one man knew about condoms but many men were unaware that each condom should be used only once. The authors note the need to not extrapolate these findings to the rest of Ghana given that Ghanas population is only 31% urban. The study also found that many men discuss with their spouses about the number of children they want and that men in general want smaller families than in the past.
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