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Many men in Turkey are motivated to use contraception and to share responsibility for family planning with their wives. About half the couples practising family planning use male-dependent methods. Men commonly use traditional methods, predominantly withdrawal, and should be treated as a specific target group in family planning programmes in order to motivate them to use modern methods.
Globally, women have been the main target for family planning campaigns until quite recent times. This appears to have been a mistake, since, in most societies, especially in developing countries, men are the main decision-makers in families.
In 1988, two-thirds of married women aged 15-49 years who used contraception employed male methods or ones requiring male cooperation (1). The most used female method was that of the intrauterine device; others included the pill and tubal ligation (2).
By 1993, only 34% of married women in the same age range were using male methods or methods requiring male cooperation: 6.b% were using condoms, 26% were using withdrawal, 1% were using the rhythm method, and 0.1% were using abstinence. The use of condoms increased from 2.5% to 8.5% with increasing age range from 15-19 to 30-34, and thereafter declined to 8.2%, 7.0% and 2.7% for the age ranges 35-39, 40-44 and 45-49 respectively. The use of the withdrawal method increased from 14% to 34% with increasing age range from 15-19 to 35-39 and then fell to 28% and 21% for the age ranges 40-44 and 45-49 (3).
According to 5% of married women in the 15-49 age group, the use of contraception methods of any kind had been stopped because of the refusal of husbands to continue; for discontinuing the use of condoms the same reason was cited by 23% of married women. The refusal of...