Voluntary family planning brings transformational benefits to women, families, communities, and countries. Investing in family planning is a development “best buy” that can accelerate achievement across the 5 Sustainable Development Goal themes of People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership.
Expanding access to family planning has been a key aim of health and development programming for more than 40 years. During that time, significant gains have been made in reducing unmet need for family planning, increasing contraceptive prevalence, and preventing unintended pregnancies. Over the last two decades, however, the pace of these gains has slowed, especially in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Not only does family planning enable individuals and couples to achieve their childbearing (family building?) goals, an ever growing body of research shows the wider beneficial impact of family planning on improving maternal and child health and survival, increasing economic well-being of individuals, families and communities, and empowering women. i , ii Today, the international community and many developing countries are aiming to accelerate progress, as made evident by the collective embrace of FP2020. Simultaneously, the world is reflecting on achievements reached and on gaps remaining in the years since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio) of 1992, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) of 1994, and the Millennium Summit of 2000, which established the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A post-2015 agenda is quickly coming into focus, aiming to merge the streams of Rio+20 sustainable development goals, ICPD Beyond 2014, and the post-MDG development agenda. Consensus is mounting on the vision and benchmarks for ending preventable child deaths, eliminating preventable maternal deaths, and creating an AIDS-free generation. Now is the time to put i By preventing unintended pregnancies, FP has reduced maternal mortality by 44 percent and could reduce it by another 29 percent if all women with unmet need for family planning became contraceptive users. Maternal deaths averted by contraceptive use: an analysis of 172 countries http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/ PIIS0140-6736(12)60478-4/abstract ii By preventing closely spaced births, FP could save the lives of more than 2 million children every year.
Data on women with at least two children are used to examine how the breastfeeding experience with the first child affects whether subsequent children are breastfed. Our results indicate that women most often repeat with later children the feeding decision they made with their first child. That is, those who breastfed their first child are very likely to breastfeed a later child and those who did not breastfeed their firstborn are unlikely to breastfeed a later-born. Among those who did not breastfeed their first child, education beyond high school increases the likelihood that they will switch to breastfeeding with a later-born. Those who breastfed their first child are less likely to breastfeed a later-born if the first breastfeeding experience was of short duration or was perceived to be unsuccessful or unsatisfactory or if the woman had not gone beyond high school or received anesthesia at the later birth. Hence, educational differences are greater at higher parities than at first parity.
Fertility awareness methods—the Lactational Amenorrhea Method, the Standard Days Method, and the Two Day Method—are safe and effective, and they have important additional benefits that appeal to women and men. Including these modern contraceptives in the method mix expands contraceptive choice and helps women and men meet their reproductive intentions.
Recent research has shown that children born before and after short birth intervals run a considerably greater risk of dying in infancy or childhood than do others. This report investigates which women have short interbirth intervals, under what circumstances, and for what reasons. The analysis uses data from the Malaysian Family Life Survey to examine influences on the two main behaviors--breastfeeding and contraceptive use--that affect birth interval length, and assesses the the impact of these same variables on the probability of having a birth interval of less than 15 months. The analysis shows that many of the independent variables affect breastfeeding and contraceptive use in opposite directions, with no significant net effect on the likelihood of a short interval. For example, a woman's education is negatively related to the probability that she breastfeeds, positively related to the probability that she uses contraceptives, and has no significant effect on the likelihood that the interpregnancy interval is less than 15 months. Having a family planning clinic nearby is associated with less breastfeeding, offsetting whatever positive effects family planning clinics have on contraceptive use in terms of the percentage of birth intervals that are so short as to be detrimental to infant and child health. Hence, factors that increase contraceptive use do not necessarily reduce the incidence of short interbirth intervals, because they are also associated with reduced breastfeeding. We simulate the proportion of intervals that would be short for alternative combinations of breastfeeding and contraceptive use in the population and show that over the period covered by the data (1961-75), breastfeeding had a considerably greater effect on preventing short interbirth intervals than did contraceptive use.
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