Male Involvement in Contraceptive Use among Tharu People Residing In Dang District of Nepal.

Objective: To assess the status of male Tharu involvement in contraceptive use and find out the spousal communication in decision making process of contraceptive use. Materials And Methods: This was a community based, cross-sectional study conducted in Rampur VDC of Dang District among 98 married Tharu women of reproductive age (15-49 years) currently living with their husbands for the period of three weeks. The data collection technique and tool was face-to-face interview and self-made semi-structured questionnaire. The collected data was entered into SPSS version 16 and analysis was done by using simple descriptive statistics like percentage, frequency, mean and standard deviations. The Chi-Square test was applied for establishing the association between the variables at 5% level of significance. Results: The mean and standard deviations of age at marriage of the respondents was 18.46 and 2.08 while that of husbands was 19.84 and 2.44 respectively. Out of 98 respondents, 88% were using the contraceptives of different types, among them only 34.9% were male contraceptive users. In almost 75% of the family planning discussion between husband and wife, the final decision was taken by common consensus between them. The media exposure of couples, and educational status of husband were not found to be statistically significant factors (p-value = 1 and 0.48 respectively) for high and low involvement of male in contraceptive use. Conclusion: This study concludes that almost one-third of contraceptive users were male, low level of male involvement. Hence it is recommended that male involvement in contraceptive use should be increased so that contraceptive use will no longer remain as a women’ business.