Immaculate Mwanza

Unmet Need for Family Planning Among Couples-kenya Immaculate Mwanza

Usually studies on unmet need for family planning have been women-based paying no attention to Men?s views and yet consensus steers best reproductive decisions. Couple based approach; using couple data derived from Kenya DHS-2009 was used to examine factors responsible for couple unmet need for family planning in order to unearth opportunities for practical and policy approaches that can accelerate the uptake of contraceptives among couples in Kenya. It adopted the theory of planned behaviour, an extension of the theory of reasoned action. Results showed couple unmet need for Family Planning (13%) to be inversely related to reproductive lifespan; women empowerment; education and decision-making are significant predictors of couple unmet need. Employed women are 1.5 times less likely to have unmet need relative to employed ones, and husbands dominance in decision making is associated with 2 times high couple unmet need. Further results show that addressing unmet need should be couple based and policies on unmet need for FP should target couples as a unit paying more attention to key predictors highlighted in the study.