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Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Educated women in RP prefer natural family planning methods: study (11:08 a.m.)
MANILA -- Women who have finished their education are fearful of the alleged "side effects" of contraceptives, which is why they prefer to practice traditional or natural family planning methods.
A 2003 study conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) indicated that out of 14,000 women that they surveyed, 17.2 percent opt to use natural or traditional methods in planning their families.
Dr. Zelda Zablan, a retired professor from the University of the Philippines Population Institute (UP-PI) said the 2003 study conducted by the NSO indicated that women who have attained a high level of education are afraid of the "ill effects" of contraceptives available in the market now.
"College educated women are aware of the effects of the contraceptives," Zablan said in a press briefing during the launching of the 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) held at the Dusit Hotel in Makati City.
However, Zablan pointed out that such belief on the ill-effects of contraceptives is wrong since there are a lot of other artificial methods, which the women could try.
"We must remember that there is no one method that is good for everyone, in a sense you have to seek the method that suits you," Zablan said, adding that a method used is not a lifetime alternative since the body undergoes changes and women would have to find the means that correspond to her needs.
Based on the survey, calendar method is commonly used by college women at 9.2 percent followed by the high school-level women at 6.1 percent.
Only 5.4 percent of elementary-educated women practice the calendar method while only 1.7 percent of illiterate women use the same.
The survey similarly showed that married women using contraceptives has almost tripled over the past 30 years or from 17 percent in 1973 to 49 percent in 2003.
While the use of contraceptives has increased, the NDHS noted that the rate of increase of contraceptive use has dramatically slowed down over the past five years, meaning the use of contraceptives only went up by two percentage points from 47 percent in 1998 to 49 percent in 2003.
The increase in the use of contraceptives was attributed mainly to the use of modern methods from 28 percent to 33 percent as against the use of traditional method, which dropped from 18 percent to 16 percent, the study noted.
It was also noted that fertility in the Philippines is steadily declining for the past three years, which registered a 0.6 percent drop from 4.1 births per woman in 1991 to 3.5 birth per woman in 2001. (Marie Neri) |
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