Some directions for research on fertility control
Stycos, J.M.
Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 36(2): 126-148
1958
ISSN/ISBN: 0026-3745 PMID: 13526581 DOI: 10.2307/3348430Document Number: 470090
Fertility control programs depend to a considerable extent on the cooperation of the elite group of a population. These individuals include teachers and officials who can make such a program successful if they understand it and are willing to help they can give helpful advice in planning a program which must be evaluated carefully because they are often out of touch with the masses of their people and have to be re-educated. The religion and religious leaders of a country may object to fertility program and the elite group may feel that this will interfere with the success of such a program. Actually in many instances this may not be so and it is found that the official religion affects the lives of the lower economic classes much less than the upper classes and that such fertility control programs may have general acceptance even in Catholic countries. Sometimes officials fear that the lower classes may resent fertility control as a means of limiting their numbers, especially when there are racial differences between upper and lower classes. This apparently is not true and in no case has this resentment resulted in lack of acceptance of such a program. Lower class fertility patterns differ depending on the structure of family organization. When the nuclear family is independent of a wider family group contraceptive programs have more chance of success than where the nuclear family is a mere unit in a wider kinship group. Acceptance of the actual contraceptive methods vary from culture to culture and what may be entirely acceptable to one group may become totally unacceptable to another culture.