Spouses’ Views of Contraception in the Philippines

act as barriers to contraceptive practice among men and women motivated to practice contraception.2 This expanded definition of contraceptive costs is consistent with the growing recognition that unmet need for family planning services cannot be attributed solely to inadequate access in many settings.3 Despite the general consensus that contraceptive decision-making entails weighing motivation against costs, to date relatively little empirical research has attempted to operationalize these concepts because of the difficulty of measuring the full array of costs. Assessing social, psychological and cultural barriers to contraceptive use is challenging, especially through conventional social surveys. At a minimum, qualitative interviews or structured survey interviews about individuals’ views of contraception are required to uncover the perceptions of costs and benefits of contraceptive use and of the desirability of features of available methods. A shift toward greater gender balance in contraceptive research has accompanied this more complete view of the determinants of contraceptive use. Increasingly, interviews with both men and women (sometimes, but not always, matched partners) have become standard research practice in developing countries; thus, there are now far more opportunities to examine male-female perspectives toward reproductive attitudes and behaviors.4 In fact, more than 30 surveys (mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa) conducted as part of the DeAnn E. Biddlecom is research associate and John B. Casterline is senior associate in the Policy Research Division, Population Council, New York. Aurora E. Perez is professor at the University of the Philippines, Manila. An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, New Orleans, La., USA, May 9–11, 1996, and appeared in revised form as Working Paper No. 92 of the Research Division, Population Council. Financial support for the research on which this article was based was provided by the EVALUATION Project, University of North Carolina; the Ford Foundation (Manila); the Mellon Foundation; The Rockefeller Foundation; and the United Nations Population Fund. Helpful comments on earlier versions were provided by David Hotchkiss, Cynthia Lloyd and John Bongaarts. Spouses’ Views of Contraception in the Philippines