Family Planning And Its Effects On Women's Status And Education

This policy contrasts with the government policy in Romania in the 1980s where the former communist government attempted to increase the birth rate by putting restrictions on contraception and abortion, setting up fertility centres, making divorce more difficult to obtain and forcing childless couples to pay an extra 5% income tax. This was set up to increase the population and therefore increase the size families in Romania. In China, there was a one child policy to reduce population size and discouraged couples from having more than one child. According to Adrian Wilson (1985) the policy is supervised by workplace family planning committees, women must seek permission to try and become to try to become pregnant, and there is a waiting list and a quota for each factory. Couples who comply with the policy get extra benefits such as free health care and higher tax allowances, An only child will also get priority in education and housing in later life. Couples who break the agreement must repay their allowances and pay a fine. Women are also faced the pressure to undergo sterilization after their first child. This encourages people to have one child and therefore affects family life by controlling family size through this policy.

One way to destroy the vicious cycle of high birth rates is to empower women through social change, specifically, education. There is a proven connection between the education level of a mother and how many children she will have, statistically. In the United States, birth rates of women with less than 12 years of total education are more than triple their college-educated counterparts. This can logically be applied to Guatemala’s situation to find that if more women are educated, not only in school, but in proper child care and contraception use, their Total Fertility Rate should rapidly decrease to a more sustainable level. This is a one-two punch: not only will women have less children, the ones they do have will likely be raised more effectively and are less likely to die of disease in infancy. Guatemala must engage in a campaign to enroll more girls in school. This will be difficult, due to the culture of the country. Women are expected to stay at home and work the fields. Culture must shift to make progress, as it so often does.

By introducing China’s One-Child Policy (Family Planning Policy) in 1979, China hopes to decrease its country’s annual population growth. China has implemented the policy by many different

The motto of the Indonesian family planning program has a great impact on the struggling individuals in the Indonesian society. It states that with two children, "We are a happy and prosperous family" (Hartmann 60). For a poor landless and unemployed family, however, limiting fertility is a hardship and does not promote happiness and prosperity. Poor families thrive on large families because it creates more workers and therefore, more earned income for the family. Supporters of the Indonesian family program contend that governmental pressure is necessary in order to get individuals to use the right means of birth control. In the long-run, the Indonesian Government believes they are only creating benefits for the families' lives because eventually, individuals will develop their own personal motivation to use contraceptions.

* Family planning campaigns incorporating social marketing techniques have been successful in countries around the world. A program in Sri Lanka recently helped avert over 60,000 unwanted pregnancies in a three-year period.

Family Planning is using contraception. By using contraception, the limit on sizes of families through spacing is regulated and the prevention of pregnancies are controlled. Family planning does not just protect the well-being of women, but also the well-being of communities as well. To increase the chances of healthy babies and planned pregnancies, there are family planning services for people who want education on family planning and healthy families. Successful family planning services should include

Scientists and economists equally agree that the answer to our population problem is education; specifically the education and empowerment in women. “The relationship between population and development with education is undeniable.” Education among women affects fertility rates in many ways, it

To begin, birth control as a whole is used as a method to prevent unwanted pregnancies. With methods such as birth control the population structure continues to change in a beneficial manner. Bastianelli, Benagiano, and Farris (2007) noted that birth control has been used as a tool to attack the global issue of population explosion over the last fifty years (Bastianelli, Bengiano, & Farris, 2007, p. 6). The rate

Perhaps one of the most pressing issues faced by women in Many African countries today are the many barriers preventing them from having access to sexual health and family planning services. “The World Health Organization (WHO) defines family planning as “the ability of individuals and couples to anticipate and attain their desired number of children and the spacing and timing of their births. It is achieved through use of contraceptive methods and the treatment of involuntary infertility” (Tessema, Gizachew Assefa, 2). By examining the causes of what is preventing women in areas Africa from taking control of their sexual health, and the number of children they wish to have, possible solutions can be contrived. In Kenya for example, “20.9 percent

The ability to procreate is something that couples have. The couples must decide whether they want to use that ability or if they want to let it go unutilized. Some countries with population problems have put limitations on couples’ ability to procreate. One of the countries that is most known for this is China with its one child policy. This policy was used to try to slow the population growth that China was experiencing. An alternative to China’s one child policy was discussed in Michael Sandel’s book, What Money Can’t Buy. Tradable procreation permits were talked about to show an alternative way to control population growth as was being done in China. In China’s one child policy each couple was granted the right to have one child and if they had another there would be large fines and consequences they would have to undergo. With tradable procreation permits each woman would receive a certificate

When the Communists came to power in 1949, the total population of China was less than one-half its current size. However, leaders did not realize the importance of controlling population size at that time, and they even encouraged families to have as many children as possible. They believed that population growth empowered the country and could build a stronger socialist state and fight against capitalism. “As a result, the population nearly doubled over the next 25 years” (Meisner).

Indonesia’s proposition to achieve these goals and to provide global access to reproductive health services is quite simple. The committee should make a resolution which requires governments to create and fund a board which is given the task to provide the citizens of the country (ranging from youths to young adults to adults to the elderly) with adequate education in relation to sexual intercourse and the consequences of intercourse and all other sex related issues. The board would also provide various contraceptives for either free (funds permitting) or as discounted as possible. The board would have to provide various contraceptives in order to meet the standards of the individual receiving the contraception’s religious beliefs. This would help significantly reduce sexual related problems seen in today’s world, such as abortion, STDs, and unwanted pregnancy.

The ways in which the South African government is trying to internally minimize population growth is by introducing programmes to support women and men with regard to their reproductive choices. One such programme is the Family Planning Programme. This programme provides

So, in order to find a solution to this problem, people began to promote “birth spacing” and not “birth control” meaning that people should only have more kids if they can support a larger family rather than having a large family in poverty (Rosenthal). The high increase of fertility rate that led to poverty was once done because Nigeria was agriculturally based and needed more people for farming. This led to rapid growth and to stop this, family planning was introduced in the 1970s but the money and attention on family planning later averted to Africa’s AIDS problems. Although Nigeria’s replacement fertility rate had decreased, it is still quite high and with an extremely young population, that can cause major problems. According to statistics, “Sub-Saharan Africa, which now accounts for 12 percent of the world's population, will account for more than a third by 2100, by many projections” if the fertility rate was to stay the same (Rosenthal).

Population control, as a concept, can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome when Aristotle claimed that a fluctuating population would cause poverty. Greek city-states, wanting to neither grow nor decline in population, practiced forms of fertility inhibition and infanticide with the hopes of keeping the population stable to a certain number of persons to prevent this catastrophe. Rome, on the other hand, under rule of Augustus, enacted laws that punished both celibacy and adultery while rewarding couples who produced offspring. As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire and beyond, it was in the medieval era that religion intertwined with population theories, and the current religious ideologies of marriage being a sacrament with the intent to procreate came to realization.