FAMILY PLANNING
Family planning is the planning of when to have children and the use of birth control and other techniques to implement such plans. Other techniques commonly used include sexuality education prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections pre-conception counseling and management, and infertility management.
Family planning is sometimes used as a synonym for the use of birth control, though it often includes more. It is most usually applied to a female-male couple who wish to limit the number of children they have and/or to control the timing of pregnancy or spacing children. Family planning may encompass sterilization, as well as pregnancy termination.
Family planning services are defined as "educational, comprehensive medical or social activities which enable individuals, including minors, to determine freely the number and spacing of their children and to select the means by which this may be achieved."
Objectives of Family Planning
To avoid unwanted birth.
To regulate intervals between pregnancy.
To determine the number of children in the family.
Goals in family planning should include balancing the desire for children with emotional, physical and financial needs. Or, if you do not wish to have children, it's important to recognize this and plan accordingly.
Figuring Out Birth Control Methods
1. While you review your overall needs and desired lifestyle, it's important to figure out a birth control method that is right for you. The choices range from birth control pills to alternative methods that involve no medication.
Protecting Your Personal Health
2. If you're overweight, underweight, or a heavy smoker, it's good to work towards a healthier you while you practice birth control and anticipate when to have children. Overcoming an unhealthy lifestyle should be a primary goal before you get pregnant.
Spacing the Ages of Children
3. Getting pregnant every two years or three years, until you have the number of children you desire, is one good way to plan births. Spacing your children with enough years apart ensures each child has time for special attention from you.
Deciding on the Size of Your Family
4. Consider your financial picture and professional goals. You must weigh your needs, and the needs of your spouse/partner, against your desires for X number of children. For example, if you plan to own a large company, it might be difficult to accomplish this if you have several children.
Accepting Sacrifices to Create a Family
5. Make sure you understand what will work in your particular situation. You might need to adjust your work hours to have a child. Or, you might ask a relative to live with you in order to baby sit. Failing to look at what's ahead in caring for a child can create a lot of stress.
Taking Control of Your Future
6. By looking far down the road--perhaps 20 years from now--you can imagine the happy family you want to create. Family planning may include adopting a child or fostering a child who is available for adoption. Detailed planning will ensure your dreams come true.
Concepts of Family Planning
Childbirth is a major event for a woman and her family. Through the concept of family planning, childbirth can be delayed, timed or avoided, giving families the opportunity to prepare for a baby and to only reproduce if and when they are in the best financial, social and psychological conditions to do so. This may be achieved through the means of family planning and birth control.
History
The modern birth control movement was a major factor in the concept of family planning. Birth control is used to prevent pregnancy and is credited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as having improved couples' abilities to plan their families.
Margret Sanger, a nurse who was concerned about the effects of multiple pregnancies, miscarriages and abortions upon the health of women, started the birth control movement in 1912. Sanger initiated efforts to provide information about and access to methods of contraception.
Significance
Not only does family planning improve the ability to plan the size of families, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also credits this concept with contributing to better infant, child and female health, and as having improved the social and economic status of women.
Function
Family planning involves education about sex and reproduction and access to methods of birth control. Methods of preventative birth control include condoms, IUDs, sterilization and the birth control pill. In the event of the failure of such methods, a "morning after" emergency pill is effective up to five days after sex. According to the World Health Organization, the pill will only work before the process of implantation has begun and does not cause an abortion.
The final method of birth control is abortion of the fetus. Abortion is legally only allowed to be performed up to a certain number of weeks, and this number varies according to region.
Family Planning Clinics
Family planning clinics are facilities where the public can gain access to information about and methods of birth control. According to the National Health Service, family planning clinics also provide health services such as cervical cancer pap smears, information about sexually transmitted diseases and counseling to victims of rape, incest and sexual abuse.
Family planning clinics are normally funded by trusts and government grants to allow people from lower income backgrounds access to these services.
Cultural factors affecting the use of family planning services in a community.
The attitudes of men and women of a community towards family size, spacing, and planning are major factors to consider. It is shown that the felt need of the women for a means of control of reproduction and their partners approval of contraception is not matched by the use of the available family planning services. It is suggested that this gap between attitudes and use is due to the lack of practical recognition by the providers of these services of health care in the community, which includes and surround the discussion and management of menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and contraception. Several ways in which family planning services could be made more acceptable culturally to both women and men in the communities are supposed to be given more attention in order for Family Planning to be effective.
