Meaning of Family Planning
There are various problem attached to family life and planning has made a scientific approach to solve these problems. It is concerned with the spacing and limitation of child-births in the family and to achieve parenthood, if medically possible. Its basic aims are to promote the happiness of married couples through marriage guidance, genetic counciling, sex education both for parents and children and also the use of contraceptives. In the whole world, it has identified with limitation of family size. The world population in the middle of seventeenth century was about 500 million and it increased to 1250 million by 1850. Within 100 years, it increased from about 1.2 billion to 2-5 billion. Fifty Million people are added each year. About 57 percent of the world’s population live in Asia.
So, the world population is increasing day by day and family planning is active to control the population through provision of new methods, techniques and knowledge about planning. The use of various contraceptives has made the fertility rate low.
Definitions of Family Planning
Some of the definitions has been given by various social scientists and demographers.
James Allman. “The conscious action taken by an individual or couples to regulate the number and spacing of their children in accordance with their personal preferences”.
William Lieu. The term is most commonly used to actions or programmes intended to prevent conception or avoid its consequences when if does occur.
M. Iqbal Chaudhry. Family Planning does not imply absence of children nor sterilization, but it is concerned only with low rate of reproduction and nothing un-natural and inhuman.
Nasar M. Shah. Knowledge about methods to prevent or delay pregnancy is essential for women and to control the number of children is
Christopher Tietze. Individuals and couples adopt patterns of birth control in accordance with their cultural values reinforced by formal or informal social pressure.
It has been concluded from the above definitions that family planning methods or techniques or a programmes adopted by married couples to prevent conception and control the number of children.