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Chauhan, et al.

and related opportunity costs might exclude these sections from accessing modern contraceptive methods. Although
modern contraceptives are available free of cost in public sectors, family planning services offered through public sectors
primarily focus on promoting permanent methods. Incentive provided for female sterilization can also be one of the
reasons for higher use of female sterilization as contraceptive use.
Finally, we found that men who had some exposure to social media had higher odds of wishing to stop having an
additional child and to use a contraceptive method in comparison with men without social media exposure. These findings
indicate that social media exposure could help change people’s views and family planning behaviors. The governments,
non-governmental organizations, stockholders, and private sectors of family planning should work together to promote
significance of family planning and implement some intervention projects.
Like other studies, the present study also has some shortcomings and strengths. First, as this study was based only
on currently married young men aged 20-49 who had at least one living child at the time of survey, the information from
unmarried men and from other ages were missing. Second, the study was based on a cross-sectional dataset; hence, only
associations between predictors and outcome variables were analyzed. Their causal relationships are still unclear. Third,
only information on fertility stopping intention was analyzed without any exploration whether the linkages between such
intention and subsequent childbearing behaviors. Fourth, data on availability and/or accessibility to family planning
services were not included in modeling of use of contraceptive methods; as such we were not able to determine whether
the use of a specific contraceptive method (or not-using of any method) was because of husband’s (or couple’s) decision
or because of the unavailability of family planning services. Fifth, relatedly, we only examined factors associated with
fertility stopping intention and the use of family planning method from men’s perspective, we were also not able to
determine or quantify the men’s role in decision-making in fertility intention and the use of contraceptive methods.
Despite this shortcoming, the main strength of the paper is that it dealt with the men’s fertility stopping intentions and
their contraceptive use and choice, an area that has been largely overlooked in the Indian context using the nationally
representative data set. The findings of the present study could be vital not only to the Government of India but also to
other stakeholders working on the field of family planning to suggest programs that would influence the contraceptive
use and decisions among currently married men. Furthermore, the study tried to contribute to the discussion of men’s
place/status in reproductive health research. More sophisticated studies that overcome above shortcomings for different
age groups, birth cohorts using longitudinal studies are clearly warranted to systematically investigate the dynamics of
fertility stopping intention and the use of contraceptive methods across space and time.
To regulate population growth, the findings of the study suggest a need for programs that can help in reducing the
gender preferences and promote the family planning use. Specifically, intervention programs should target individuals
with fewer or no sons and those men who are likely to be young and, by implication, to have high fertility desire,
and target individuals who have not yet attained their desired family sizes as well as non-users of family planning to
ensure that those who do not desire any more children do not get unwanted pregnancies. Since previous family planning
programs and recently launched Mission Parivar Vikas for substantially increasing access to contraceptives and family
planning services focusing on women in 146 high fertility districts of India, about 87% of the funds available for family
planning have been directed toward terminal methods with 95.8% of such amount for female sterilization (Financial
Management Report, 2016-2017), which may indicate that funds for promoting male sterilization methods should be
increased. Overall, our findings suggest that men are an important target group in fertility regulation interventions.
5. Conclusion
Using the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey conducted in 2015-2016, the present study found that
around 78% of currently married Indian men aged 20-49 who already have had at least one child did not want another
child. Men in older cohort, having more children, having more sons than daughters, being richer, from Northern India,
or having media exposure were more likely not to want another child. However, more than 70% of these men did not use
any contraceptive method, which indicates a high level of unmet need family planning among this population. Additional
analyses showed that demographic factors, socio-economic characteristics, region and culture, and exposure of social
media were all associated with use of a specific conceptive method. More efforts must be focused on strategies to enhance
men’s awareness of contraceptives by providing them with basket of choice of family planning with proper information
on the advantages and disadvantages of specific methods. Furthermore, programs need to target men on the basis of
number of children already have and children sex composition. As men’s fertility intentions, reproductive preferences,
and their attitude toward family planning also influence the fertility behavior of their wives and their attitude toward the
use of contraceptives, family planning programs need to target young men precisely at all levels to increase the use of
contraception to achieve the country’s reproductive health goals and eventually achieve the SDGs-3 and 5.

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