Fathers and Families

Some people view family planning as one of modernity's transforming achievements, part of the women's revolution. But from a heyday in which population policies were constantly in the news and a leading development practice, the whole topic seemed to go underground. There were good reasons and bad.

The good? Experience and research showed that family size was linked as much to prosperity and education as it was to aggressive promotion of contraceptives. Enrolling girls in school and offering women opportunities to earn income had a side effect of reducing the number of children they had. Average family size has come down worldwide, sometimes with top-notch family planning programs but sometimes without them. Iran, for one, has had remarkable success in bringing down its birth rate, with active support from religious leaders.

The bad? Family planning got caught in the mangle of politico-religious debates about reproduction. The real third rail, of course, is abortion. But family planning more generally has come to be seen as controversial.

The 1994 Cairo United Nations Conference on Population and Development offered a show of what many saw as an "unholy alliance" between Catholic Church leaders and some Islamic states questioning family planning policies; this shattered the consensus that women were entitled to family planning services as a basic right.

Moral outrage has polarized discussion. Advocates of reproductive rights remain enraged by restrictions on information and services about reproduction, while opponents hear "family planning" and think abortion.

The religious dimensions are complex. A Moroccan book about illegitimate births contrasts the Koran's approach to pregnancy with the Judeo-Christian approach. One links the disdain of societies for women and the tendency to blame the woman for a pregnancy to Eve's original sin, forever condemning women to bear the shame and stigma of her act. The author compares that to the Koran's teaching that Adam and Eve shared equal responsibility. That's a thought-provoking argument to bring men into the discussion, not as judges (so often the case) but as participants.

Vocabulary, it turns out, makes a big difference in perceptions. The networking group Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) examined attitudes toward family planning at its Memorial Day conference and discovered, for example, that the term "population control" generates allergic reactions.

With climate change refocusing attention on the impact of growing populations and their demands for resources, it's a good time to discuss family planning again.

I was truly startled to meet someone at an academic conference recently who argued that reproductive health was the wrong issue to focus on. He was indignant that columnist Nicholas Kristof had urged a renewed focus on family planning, especially in countries like Haiti. When I probed why, his answer was that fathers belong at the center, not family planning "devices".

While I disagree profoundly with his basic arguments, the idea that men need to be engaged makes good sense. Father's Day is a good time to remember that family planning is not a women's issue but one for us all.