A Retrospective Cohort Analysis of Family Planning Behaviour in India

Background: Family Planning programs influence women’s health by contributing to universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services. Access to contraception assists in delaying, spacing and limiting pregnancies. Despite being the first country that had implemented the family planning back in 1952, the Indian government has failed to achieve desirable family planning outcomes. This study examines the cohort-wise family planning behaviour of married women.Methods: Data from four rounds of National Family Health Survey (NFHS), India conducted in 1992-93, 1998-2000, 2005-06, and 2015-16 were pooled to construct marriage cohorts with sample size of 749102 women aged 15-49 years. Twelve consecutive marriage cohorts were made from 1957 to 2016. A trend analysis was performed on cohorts married after 1957 to determine if they will ultimately attain ever-use of family planning levels. Bivariate and multivariate analysis were carried out to understand the family planning behaviour by marital cohorts and marital duration. Results: The result found that ever use of contraception has decreased among the recent cohorts in all the four rounds of survey. The study found that the odds of use of contraception has increased in recent cohorts. The women in 2012-16 cohort were 1.6 times more likely to use any contraception than women from 1957-61 cohort. Results found that use of contraception increases with increase in marital duration of the women. After attaining the parity of 3 children, the desire of conceiving additional child among women has decreased significantly over the cohorts. The result also found that among the older cohorts, the sterilization was preferred after 5+ parity, and for the recent cohorts, sterilization is being preferred with 0-2 parity. Conclusion: There is a need to identify the groups with the unmet need for contraception, and an attempt to reach these groups with contraceptive services is highly desirable.

Marital Surname Change and Marital Duration Among Divorcées in a Canadian County

Women’s marital surname change has been discussed as comprising one possible signal of intention to remain married, and may be perceived as such, and valued, by husbands. Here, the practice was investigated as a potential predictor of marital duration among couples who went on to divorce. An archival analysis was based on a search of all available, opposite-sex divorces filed over an 8-month period in a Canadian county. Among couples (n = 107) divorcing, marriages the women in which underwent marital surname change lasted 60% longer, controlling for wife’s age at the time of marriage. When the woman’s marital surname change/retention was used as a regression predictor of number of children of the marriage alongside marriage duration in years, only the latter was predictive. No husband took his wife’s surname. Giving the maternal surname (along with the paternal surname) to children occurred at a negligible frequency. Potential reasons for these findings including costly signaling and, ultimately, paternity uncertainty, as well as possible implications for public policy, are discussed.

Relationship-oriented values and marital and life satisfaction among Chinese couples

Objective and background: The present study tested whether the similarity levels of relationship-oriented values among Chinese couples would be higher than those among randomly matched male–female pairs. Furthermore, we examined whether couple similarity of relationship-oriented values would predict spouses’ marital satisfaction and life satisfaction above the actor and partner effects of relationship-oriented values over time and the potential marriage cohort differences. Method: Data were retrieved from the China Family Panel Studies data set in 2010–2014. Our study included a nationally representative sample of 10,860 first-married couples who provided data on relationship-oriented values, marital satisfaction, and life satisfaction. Results: The average profile similarity on relationship-oriented values of the real couples was higher than that of the randomly matched male–female pseudo couples. Actor–Partner Interdependence Model analyses showed that (1) couple similarity of relationship-oriented values was positively associated with husbands’ and wives’ life satisfaction indirectly through wives’ marital satisfaction among couples with short to medium marital duration, even after controlling for life satisfaction 4 years ago and a set of sociodemographic variables; (2) husbands’ relationship-oriented values were positively associated with couples’ life satisfaction indirectly through husbands’ marital satisfaction among couples with short to medium and long marital duration. Conclusion: With a large dyadic sample of Chinese couples, our findings expand the literature on the significant role of couple similarity of relationship-oriented values in personal and relational well-being.

The Correlates of Violence against Women in India: Findings from the Recent National Demographic Health Survey

Violence against women is a serious human rights abuse and public health issue in India. The Intimate Partner violence (IPV) cases among Indian couples are very high. This article aims to find the determinant of Intimate Partner Violence in India. The data are drawn from the fourth round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-IV). According to Demographic Health Survey guidelines, IPV is measured using 13-item questions in women questionnaire. This section is analysed to fulfil the objective of the study. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression is used to find out the unadjusted and adjusted odds ratio. The analysis is carried out using STATA version 14. The prevalence of IPV, emotional violence (EV), physical violence (PV) and sexual violence (SV) is 33.15, 13.23, 29.68 and 6.60 respectively. The likelihood of IPV increases with the increase in marital duration. All kind of violence is less likely to occur in rural areas (IPV: AOR=0.86, p<0.01; EV: AOR=0.81, p<0.01; PV: AOR=0.85, p<0.01; & SV: AOR=0.92, p=0.09). Hindu women are more likely to face all kind of violence than women in other religion. Alcohol consumption is one of the predominant factors for IPV in India (AOR=3.08, CI=2.96-3.21, p<0.01). From this study, we find that marital duration, the age difference of spouses, number of children, place of residence, caste, religion, and education of couple, alcohol consumption and wealth index are some of the important predictors of IPV in India.