Family Planning is one of the important interventions for safe motherhood and birth spacing and a
fundamental pillar of reproductive health. The practice of family planning methods are influenced
by a variety of interrelated factors such as level of education, socio-economic condition, age at
marriage, size of the family, number of children, beliefs etc. There is a need to raise the level of
acceptance of family planning methods to address issues related to maternal mortality, infant
mortality, uncontrolled population growth, and many more. Objective: To find out the causal factors
that prevent couples to adopt family planning methods, and to measure the awareness level about
various family planning methods. Methodology: Descriptive research design was used for the study.
300 married women in the reproductive age group of 15-45 years were chosen from the Dept. of
Gynaecology of Silchar Medical College & Hospital (SMCH) by using purposive sampling
technique. Pre-tested semi-structured interview schedule was used to collect primary data from the
Out Patient Department (OPD) and post-natal section of Gynaecology Dept., SMCH. Results: Only
7% of the study population were fully aware about several family planning methods. On the other
hand, 61% were partially aware and 32% were completely ignorant about the matter. Only 7% of
the study population were using some form of contraception. Oral Contraceptive Pill (OCP) was the
most dominant method. Among the users of contraceptives, 68.18% were users of OCP and among
the non-users, 45.5% opined to use the same in future. Husbands (87%) were observed to be the
chief decision maker for contraceptive use. Contraceptive acceptance was revealed to increase
significantly with the increase in age of women, literacy status and number of living children.
Reasons for non-acceptance of contraceptives were lack of sufficient information (45.3%), desire for
more children (24.8%), negligence (9%), misconception & superstition (6.8%), opposition from
family members (6.1%), shyness & introvert nature (5.8%) and religious factors (2.2%).
Conclusion: Improvement of female autonomy through increasing women’s education and by
adopting modern & effective socio-economic measures has emerged as requisite for increasing
knowledge and acceptance of contraceptive use