Chapter Overview

There are many contraceptives available--vaginal spermicides, spermicidal, and mechanical devices (or barrier methods). Non-device approaches also are used, such as the fertility awareness method, coitus interruptus, or noncoital stimulation. Some men and women opt for sterilization. All methods and approaches have advantages and disadvantages; none is ideal. Some people decide on abortion, over which there is a great deal of conflict based on five important considerations--legal, physical and medical, moral, social and realistic, and psychological and personal. About 15 percent of women have sought medical help to conceive. Surgical and hormonal treatments help couples, as well as do various alternative means, such as artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization. Adoption is an alternative way to become a parent, but the availability of infants has been steadily declining. Adoption practices vary in terms of openness of communication permitted among adoptive parents, birth parents, and child.

Contraception has increasingly enabled couples to make a choice about being parents. Childlessness by choice and delayed parenthood are increasing as the number of children desired is decreasing. Childless couples tend to be well educated, urban, less traditional in gender roles, upwardly mobile, and professional. Even though attitudes about having children are changing, couples still can face considerable pressure from families and friends to have children. Planned parenthood involves having children by choice, not by chance.