Family Planning Programs

This family planning class is supported by the government of Kenya and funded by the World Bank. According to this poster, the health educator, who is holding up the sign, "is giving these women information that will help them decide whether to have children, and if so, when and how many."
1) Did European women in the past, or your parents or you, attend family planning classes to decide how many children and when to have them?
2) Do birth control information and techniques (intra-uterine devices (IUD), The Pill, diaphragms, cervical caps, condoms, rhythm method) really allow women and families to decide how many children to have, or are men's status attitudes about the number of children, or family economic conditions as critical or more critical?

Answers:

• Historically, European families reduced the number of children without family planning programs and birth control techniques. The Demographic Model documents this voluntary change from large to small families.

• Large family size has been and still is characteristic of low-income families, especially those who engage in labor-intensive economic activities such as agriculture, regardless of whether they live in the South or North. Families have fewer children as their standard of living, including food and health, improved. As the United Nations motto says: "Take care of the population and the population will take care of itself."