SNNPR State Health Bureau, Hawassa, Sidama, Ethiopia.
Transform Primary Health Care Project, Hawassa, Sidama, Ethiopia.
PeerJ. 2023 Mar 21;11:e15103. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15103. eCollection 2023.
Understanding fertility preferences is important for population studies and planning programs. The ideal family size, which is the number of children wanted in one's lifetime, is one of variables used to measure fertility preferences. However, there was limited information on ideal family size decision in Southern Ethiopia. Therefore, this study was designed to assess ideal family size decision and its associated factors among women of reproductive age in Southern Ethiopia.
A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in 2015 in Southern Ethiopia. Multi-stage stratified cluster sampling was used to select 3,205 study subjects. Data on socio-demographic characteristics, reproductive history, deciding ideal number of children, knowledge and utilization of contraceptives were considered. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression were done to describe and assess factors associated with deciding ideal family size. The association between variables was presented using odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals.
We included 3,205 women of reproductive age from which 37.5% respondents could not read and write and 56.5% were housewives. About half of the respondents, 47.1%, did not decide ideal numeric family size or failed to report numeric preferences while 21.6% desire to have five or more children. The mean ideal number of children preferred was 4.5 ± 1.62. Educational status ( < 0.001), overall knowledge about contraceptives ( < 0.001), current contraceptive use ( < 0.001), place of residence ( < 0.001), age ( < 0.004), marital status ( < 0.003) and number of living children ( < 0.003) were factors associated with deciding ideal family size.
Only about half of respondents decided ideal family size from which one fifth prefer high fertility. The mean ideal number of children was comparable with that of Sub-Saharan estimate. Counselling that can empower women to decide family size should be strengthened to empower less empowered women.
了解生育意愿对于人口研究和规划项目至关重要。理想家庭规模是衡量生育意愿的一个变量，指的是一个人一生中想要的孩子数量。然而，关于埃塞俄比亚南部理想家庭规模的决定因素的信息有限。因此，本研究旨在评估埃塞俄比亚南部育龄妇女的理想家庭规模决定因素及其相关因素。
2015 年在埃塞俄比亚南部进行了一项基于社区的横断面研究。采用多阶段分层聚类抽样方法选择了 3205 名研究对象。考虑了社会人口特征、生育史、决定理想子女数量、对避孕措施的知识和利用情况等数据。采用描述性统计和二元逻辑回归方法描述和评估与决定理想家庭规模相关的因素。使用 95%置信区间的比值比来表示变量之间的关联。
我们纳入了 3205 名育龄妇女，其中 37.5%的受访者无法读写，56.5%为家庭主妇。约一半的受访者（47.1%）没有决定理想的子女数量或未能报告具体的生育偏好，而 21.6%希望生育五个或更多孩子。受访者期望的平均理想子女数量为 4.5 ± 1.62。教育程度（<0.001）、对避孕措施的总体知识（<0.001）、当前避孕措施的使用（<0.001）、居住地（<0.001）、年龄（<0.004）、婚姻状况（<0.003）和现有子女数量（<0.003）与决定理想家庭规模有关。
只有约一半的受访者决定了理想的家庭规模，其中五分之一的人希望生育更多的孩子。期望的平均子女数量与撒哈拉以南非洲的估计值相当。应加强能够赋予妇女决定家庭规模权力的咨询服务，以增强弱势妇女的能力。
