IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v45y1997i12p1789-1804.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cultural eactors constraining the introduction of family planning among the Kassena-Nankana of Northern Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Adongo, Philip B.
  • Phillips, James F.
  • Kajihara, Beverly
  • Fayorsey, Clara
  • Debpuur, Cornelius
  • Binka, Fred N.

Abstract

This study presents a focus group investigation of reasons why women in a rural, Sahelian community are reluctant to adopt family planning even when convenient services are made freely available. First, women opting to practice contraception must do so at considerable risk of social ostracism or familial conflict. Implementing individual preference is something that must be done without the support of others. Second, few women view personal decisions about contraceptives as theirs to make. Women and children are the property of the corporate family-kin and community militate against reproductive control. Third, although children are highly valued for a variety of economic, social, and cultural reasons, mortality risks remain extremely high. Low fertility imposes the unacceptable risk that a woman will have no surviving children at the end of her reproductive life. Taken together, these findings attest to the inadequacy of service strategies focused on the contribution of distribution, individual agency, or personal choice. Outreach should also build a sense of community legitimacy for the program, collective health action, and traditional leadership support for family planning behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Adongo, Philip B. & Phillips, James F. & Kajihara, Beverly & Fayorsey, Clara & Debpuur, Cornelius & Binka, Fred N., 1997. "Cultural eactors constraining the introduction of family planning among the Kassena-Nankana of Northern Ghana," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 45(12), pages 1789-1804, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:45:y:1997:i:12:p:1789-1804
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(97)00110-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Angelina Wilson & Nceba Z. Somhlaba, 2018. "Gender, Age, Religion and Positive Mental Health Among Adolescents in a Ghanaian Socio-Cultural Context," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 11(4), pages 1131-1158, August.
    2. Aborigo, Raymond Akawire & Allotey, Pascale & Reidpath, Daniel D., 2015. "The traditional healer in obstetric care: A persistent wasted opportunity in maternal health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 59-66.
    3. Esther Abena Adama & Sara Bayes & Deborah Sundin, 2018. "Parents’ experiences of caring for preterm infants after discharge with grandmothers as their main support," Journal of Clinical Nursing, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(17-18), pages 3377-3386, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:45:y:1997:i:12:p:1789-1804. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.