Family Planning does not merely mean avoiding having children or restricting their number and use of Contraception.

Family planning means planning how couples can improve the quality of family life.

Awareness of Family Planning amongst general population in Countries like India would help in making best use of resources, and giving the best in respect of education, health, food and shelter to everyone.

Family Planning includes:

• Taking decisions on right age for marriage, and when to have a child.
• Choosing suitable methods of contraception for regulating and spacing childbirth.
• Helping childless couples to have children
• Provide guidance before and after marriage and for planning a child.
• Guiding couples on long-term happy relationship, parenting skills, social skills and family economics.
• Creating awareness for social responsibilities
• Planning a family improves quality of life. By regulating family size each child comes when it is wanted, and gets the love, care, security, and nurturing needed for her/his total development.

Having a small family would also mean having enough time for each other, best use of resources, giving each child a better opportunity to develop and have a comfortable life style; with minimum compromises.

Family Planning is a very serious decision to be taken by both partners. Therefore, they need to understand importance of developing cordial relationship between the partners, preparing for the family cycle they would undergo and their needs. 

Both 'would-be parents' need to ask themselves, together as well as separately some questions whether to have a child or when to have a child.

Their decision not only affects their life individually and as a couple, but also matters most for their child.

There is no ‘Right’ or ‘Wrong’ answer. The answers may change time to time. What you must have mutually agreed before marrying may be changed immediately after marriage. The changing situations and priorities influence most on this decision making. However, for every decision there are consequences which both partners have to face.

 

1.   What are my personal and family priorities?

2.   Will I be able to manage a child as well as job or career? Will I have
sufficient time and energy for both?

3.   After having a child, will I have freedom to do what I want to do?

4.   Can we afford to support a child?  How much money one needs to raise a
child?

5.   How much attention child would require as he/she grows and will that
interfere with my career prospects?

6.   Am I willing to sacrifice most lovely part of my life for taking responsibility
of a child?

7.   Do I really love or like children?

8.   Will I be able to raise my kid with values I desire?

9.   Will my child be intelligent, smart or just average or challenged in some
way? Are we ready to accept what we get?

10.  Would I want my child to achieve things that I wished but could not?

11.  Do I want a boy or girl child? Am I willing to accept happily whatever I get?

12.  Do we need a child to prove that we are complete as a man and a woman?

13.  Do we need a child to make our life happy or have such expectations?

14.  Will I be able to do justice to my child in being able to give what he/she
deserves in life?

15.  Am I patient enough to deal with the noise, demands and tantrums as well as round the clock responsibility of a child?

16.  I am short tempered and demanding. How will it affect my child?

17.  Will I be able to take care of my child’s health and physical as well as
mental growth?

18.  What if after having a child, I regret my decision?

19.  Does my partner want to have a child as much as I want?  Do we agree on
all reasons to have a child?

20.  Do we love each other enough to give our child ‘happy’ parents?

21.  Could we both enjoy and share love as well as responsibility of  our child
without jealousy and accusations?

22.  What if we decide not to have a child?

23.  What if we think of adoption?

Most families face the challenge of fulfilling ever growing needs from limited family resources. Each member of the family has certain demands which need to be satisfied for everyone to be happy.

Family needs include:

• Common basic physical needs of every member of the family, like food, clothing, shelter and education, in addition to need of the couple to get satisfactory sexual relationship.
• Then arises the need of being accepted, to love and being loved, that is sense of belonging which generates and maintains the family bond.
• This is followed by need for self-respect and being respected within the family and people we come in contact with.
• Finally there is a need of achievement as an individual member of the family or the entire family (Personal, Family and Social achievements).
• Family of great achievers sometimes are willing to sacrifice or compromise on first three sets of needs to achieve the goal of life.
• In the situations where family ties are strong, older ones continue to influence decisions of younger ones, but in exchange give them moral as well as financial support to stabilise in life.
• Similarly younger ones support older ones when they are unable to take care of themselves.
• However, couples must be prepared to face the situation wherein their children cut off all family ties and leave them to look after themselves.
  

This is possible if couple understands the demands of each stage of family cycle. Couple must consider judicious utilization of resources in bringing up children, their education and marriage expenses and still be able to make provisions specially the post-retirement period.

Therefore, every couple should decide early, even before their marriage about their priorities, when to have the first child, how many children to have, and how they should be spaced.

Planning a family and the resources ensure that each child gets a balanced diet, adequate clothing, proper housing, education and medical attention. Also, family will able to have sufficient time for each other and create a stress-free happier environment to enjoy.

Most married couples have family or social pressure to have a child within first two years of marriage.  It is assumed that every married couple can handle demands of parental responsibilities as and when situation arises.

Reality today is, leave aside child related responsibilities; most couples are even unaware of responsibilities and challenges of husband-wife relationships.

It is strongly recommended that every couple must take pre-marriage guidance. In situations where this opportunity is lost, couple can still take this guidance after marriage no matter how many years have passed.

Pre-Pregnancy guidance is recommended to understand best time to have a baby, risks of pregnancy, managing healthy pregnancy as well as preparing for challenges of Parenting.

Good Parenting demands

1.   Quality and Quantity Time for child as well as Spouse

2.   Sacrifice of time, money and energy

3.   Understanding the physical, emotional and social needs of children

4.   Accepting changes in children as they grow

5.   Accepting children as they are, like dull or bright, healthy or challenged, dark
or fair, girl or a boy

6.   Listening to them with patience, disciplining them and building values and
self-esteem

7.   Coping with the crises of child care

8.   Enjoying their company

All this without compromising on intimate and sexual relation with the spouse

Today parenting has become more complex and challenging. 

Reasons being -

1.   Growing number of nuclear families. Hence child becomes responsibility of
parents alone.

2.   Influence of the media, internet and social network which has made
parenting most challenging in respect of value building and culture abiding.

3.   Larger number of working women has to rely more on outside help, thereby
allowing uncontrolled contacts and influences.

Understanding how most families grow and how their needs change in the process; may help in anticipating and solving at least the most common issues in your family life, without much difficulty.

1.   Our society is based on the bonds of religion and marriage.
Therefore, both the partners are bonded through a ceremony of marriage which implies relationship commitments.

2.   In most societies especially Indian, woman leaves her home and goes
to husband’s home. She has to get adjusted to habits, values and expectations of  ‘his’ family including adapting to their family customs.

3.   In this one-sided adjustment woman may have to lose her separate
identity.

4.   The couple then begins family life by getting adjusted to priorities,
habits, and ideas of the spouse and begin to get adjusted to differences and learn the best way to complement each other for making happier relationship.

5.   Only when this stage is successfully managed, marital relation gets
established between the couple.

6.   From the time woman knows she is pregnant, the family priorities
change.

7.   The couple starts preparing for the new member and adjustments
increase. Proper child care becomes priority.

8.   Misunderstandings may develop about one partner paying more
attention to child than another partner.

9.   Unhappiness may creep into some families over choice of boy or a girl child.

10. The family with school-going child is seen with different perspective.

11. Richer class make every effort to give as best a formal education as possible.

12.  Less fortunate kids find both their parents making extra efforts to
earn more to make both ends meet and balance their work as well as home management.

13.  Many poor families world over including India never see their
children going to school, because there is pressure of going to work as early as possible, for survival of the family.

14.  In the next stage, educationally streamlined Teenagers may expect
freedom and still hold their parents responsible for everything they could not get in life.

15. This is a challenging period for Couples, when they have to protect
their children from bad company, sexual misbehaviour, addictions and motivate constantly to take path of higher achievements in life

16. The family then becomes a launch pad for child’s career. This may
become stage of separation for some families either for career or after marriage.

17. Those living with married children have to once again go through
phase of adjustment and share the resources.

18. The couple by then enters late middle age and has to prepare for
living together alone in an ‘empty nest’.

19.  More fortunate either enjoy leisure time with their hobbies or
favourite entertainment separately; or prefer to enjoy babysitting and playing with their grand children.

20.  As the couple gets older they face situation of increased time
availability, reduced responsibilities coupled with reduced energy and health related issues.

Couples who foresee these situations and prepare themselves with realistic expectations continue to enjoy later part of life. Couple in loving relationship find the companionship more pleasurable even in very old age.