Social Benefits of Family Planning

Abstract

Some of the social benefits that families would derive from planning their families and spacing their children are reviewed. Studies that support the social benefits described are briefly cited. In less developed countries, infant and child mortality are much lower in small than in large families. In a survey of 11 Punjab villages over the 1955-58 period, 116 infants out of 1000 babies born to families with only 2 children died before their 1st birthday. The infant mortality rate ws 206/1000 in families in which the mother had given birth to 7 or more living children. For the same villages, 196 of 1000 children born between 3-4 years after a previous birth died before reaching age 2 years; the corresponding rate was 137 among children born after an interval of more than 4 years. The greater the number of children the greater is the likelihood of malnutrition among low income families. Since growth is related to nutrition it would be expected that the height and weight of children in small families would be greater on the average than in large families. Even in high income countries the children of poor families are taller and heavier at any given age when there are fewer children in the family. The number of children in the family is also associated with linguistic skills, intelligence, and educational performance. Both physical growth and the greater cultural nurturing associated with small families appear to affect intelligence. There is also some evidence that family size takes its toll on parents. Hare and Shaw who studied 55 British families observed that both physical and mental ill health in parents increased with family size. It was more marked among mothers than among fathers. General health would improve markedly if family planning measures were more widely available and more widely used to reduce early and late pregnancies, to place a reasonable limit on family size, and to keep a healthy interval between births. In regulating fertility through family planning, the families derive social benefits such as: maximization of nutritional resources; preserving the woman's health and lengthening her life expectancy; relieving the family's economic strain; allowing the woman the freedom to take advantage of education and employment opportunities and participate more actively in community life and to realization of ambitions and social, economic, and psychological needs.