ABSTRACT
Family planning is often regarded as the woman's responsibility, but there is growing recognition of the need to involve men in family planning programs.The objective of the study was to determine the role of men in family planning decision-making and toassess men’s attitude towards family planning. A cross sectional survey was carried out in Kungher, rural area of Patan district of Gujarat, India and 610 eligible couples were interviewed using a pre-tested, semi-structured interviewer based questionnaire to collect information pertaining to the couple’s socio-demographic data, fertility intentions & attitude towards contraception.It was seen that majority of the males were in the age group of 40 – 45 years (32.8%) and females were in the age group of 35 – 39 years (31.1%). Among the women whose spouse approved of their contraceptive usage, 41.3% of the women were using contraceptives and 58.7% were not using any contraceptive. 79.7% of the women who had frequent (more often) discussions with their partners were currently using contraceptives and 20.3% did not use any form of contraceptives despite frequent discussions. As regards perception of ideal family size it was observed that in 68.7% (95% CI: 63.2 – 74.2%) of cases there was agreement between husband and wife about the number of children that they should ideally have.It was concluded that men should be actively involved at knowledge, supportive and acceptor level, so that their decision making role can be utilised for promotion of contraceptives in appositive manner.Family planning programmes shouldinvolve men at all levels of the programme.