Spouse Communication and Attitudes towards Contraceptive use among Married Women in Morogoro Municipality

Abstract

This study was conducted with the purpose of determining whether
spouses communicate on matters related to reproduction in the study area and tried to find out whether there is any correlation with contraceptive behaviour. The study was conducted to a sample of 135 randomly selected married women aged between 15-49 years from Morogoro Municipality. It was found out from this study that, majority of respondents do have positive attitudes towards spouse communication on reproductive matters though in actual sense the number of those who actually communicate is low. Contraceptive use was found to be high among respondents with high and neutral attitude towards spouse communication and the same pattern
was observed to those who reported to communicate with their spouse. Surprisingly, respondents with low levels of communication had also high current contraceptive use indicating that they use contraceptive covertly. The study recommends that, it is important that policy makers should emphasize on the strategies that encourage discussion between husband and wife about family planning. Furthermore, more effort should be made to make sure that continuation rate is also high as the current use and intention to use contraceptives is high in the study area.

Keywords: Contraceptives, spouse communication, married women, family
planning