Page 19 - IJPS-7-1

Chauhan, et al.

more likely to use a modern method and 45% more likely to use female sterilization relative to using a traditional method
than the latter.
4. Discussion
Population scientists have focused their study on fertility mainly on the fertility behavior of women while paying little
attention to the role of men and the implication of their participation on fertility and population growth. However, there
is evidence to show that men’s participation in women’s sexual and reproductive health is an important determinant of a
positive reproductive health outcome for their partners and children (Assaf and Deavis, 2018) that men’s influence on the
desired number of children within the household is also vital for family planning, and that couples together can protect
reproductive health by confirming the effective family planning method use, avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, and
stabilizing fertility behavior (Koffi, Weidert, Bitasse, et al., 2018).
Using the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) data, the primary purposes of the present
study are to investigate factors associated with the fertility stopping intention among currently married men of India
who had at least one living child and factors associated with family planning method uses among currently married men
of India who had at least one living child and had no intention to have another child. In our knowledge, this research is
among the first that has systematically examined both men’s fertility intention and contraceptive uses and their associated
factors in a single research.
The findings of this study show that about 78% of the currently married men aged 20-49 with 1+ child in contemporary
India did not wish to have any more child, yet more than 70% of these men did not use any contraceptive method. This
is a clear indication of the higher unmet need of the family planning among reproductive couples (Dahal, Padmadas and
Hinde, 2008) of India that need to be address through providing the basket of choices of contraceptive methods.
Regarding the factors associated with fertility intention and contraceptive use, we found that demographic,
socioeconomic, religious and cultural, and social media exposure factors played a significant role in determining men’s
fertility intention as well as contraceptive use. Specifically, the odds ratios of not wishing to having any more child
increased with age and the likelihood of using contraceptive method also increases with age, which is likely because
older men had already had desired numbers and/or sex composition of children than younger men who have not had time
to have their expected numbers and/or sex composition of children. This is also the case for the factor of the number of
children.
The results further show that men having both girls and boys were associated with higher odds of not wishing to have
another child compared to men either having all sons or having all daughters and that men having no sons were less like
to stop having another child compared to men having all sons. This suggests that the sex composition of children plays
a significant role in determining the men’s fertility intention in contemporary India. In terms of contraceptive use, men
with all daughters were less likely to use modern methods and less likely to use female sterilization, which is justifiable
since they still wish to have more children. Nevertheless, men who intended to not have children were more likely to
use contraception compared to those who intended to have more children (Roy, Ram, Nangia, et al., 2003), which is
also consistent to our supplementary analysis using the NFHS-4 (not shown). Thus, understanding fertility intention and
family planning use behavior of population can be another way to identify populations with higher need and less use of
family planning than general population.
The finding that more educational attainment of men was associated with lower odds of not wishing to have one
additional child is unexpected. This might be because illiterate men have already achieved the desired level of family size
they desired as the age at marriage and the age at childbearing are lower among illiterates than among their counterparts
more years of schooling (Chauhan, Sekher, Kumar, et al., 2020; Ní Bhrolcháin and Beaujouan, 2012). A closer examination
the causes including whether there is a bias in sampling is clearly needed to further shed light on this. Men with more
education tend to use modern spacing method instead of female sterilization and traditional methods. One reason is
possibly that they have more access to modern methods. This finding is in line with previous findings (Dwivedi, Ram and
Reshmi, 2007; Paudel and Acharya, 2018).
The occupation of the men influences the use of contraception (Kamal, 2000). Previous studies demonstrated that men
in agrarian subsistence economies prefer large numbers of children both as a source of labor and economic gain, and as
a source of prestige (Bankole and Singh, 1998; Blacker, Opiyo, Jasseh, et al., 2005; Ayhan, Gözükara, and Koruk, 2017;
Hardee, Croce-Galis, and Gay, 2017). It is thus possible that men in the agricultural sector were more likely to wish to stop
having one additional child, which is reflected in our findings (Kock and Prost, 2017). Our findings also show that men in
the agricultural sector were associated with lower odds of using contraception (Adanikin, McGrath and Padmadas, 2017;
Dral, Tolani, Smet, et al., 2018).). This implies a large unmet need among this group of population.

International Journal of Population Studies | 2021, Volume 7, Issue 1 13