Knowledge and Attitude regarding the Family Planning among Spouses in Sub-Urban Primary Health Care Centres in Erbil Province

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Family Planning refers to couples who make educated choices about having children, such as timing their pregnancies and limiting the number of children that they will have via contraceptive techniques.
Objective of the Study: To assess couples' knowledge and attitudes about family planning and its association with their sociodemographic characteristics.

Methods: A quantitative, cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire which consisted of socio-demographic characteristics, couple’s knowledge (17 questions), and couple’s attitude (18 questions) among 288 couples in primary health care centers sub-urban Erbil province from September 2021 to December 2022, met the exclusion criteria for pregnant who refused participation and inclusion criteria in reproductive age 15-49, married women with their partner and who use contraceptives. The data were analyzed with the statistical package for the social science version 26.

Results: Most of the spouses were in the age group 25–34 years old. The sources of infor-mation about family planning methods for husbands were 56.3% from social media, and the wives 54.9% from family. Most of the husbands are 51.4%. Their overall knowledge regarding family planning methods was fair. There was an association between the husbands’ occupation and knowledge of family planning methods (P-value=0.044). The highest proportions of the study sample (66%) of the husband and (63.2%) of wives preferred oral contraceptive pills as the best method for family planning.

Conclusion: The overall knowledge of the husbands was fair (acceptable), while the wives had good knowledge. There was a correlation between the husband's knowledge and the wife's attitude towards family planning methods based on sociodemographic characteristics, but there was no correlation between the husbands' knowledge and the wives' knowledge.