• Summary
• Credits

1. Focus on Men
2. Contraceptive Use
3. Contraceptive Awareness and Approval
4. Fertility Preferences
• Fewer Men than Women Want To Stop Having Children
• Men Want Larger Families than Women Do
5. Young Men

• Figures
• Tables
• Side-bars
• Bibliography

• Men overreport, and women under-report, condom use
• Why many men do not intend to use family planning
• Radio and TV messages reach more men than women
• Most men want to have more children than women do
• Sexually active young unmarried men at risk for HIV/AIDS

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Fertility Preferences

Particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, most married men surveyed say they want more children. Men are more likely than women to want additional children, and on average they want to have a larger number of children than women do. Survey findings on these reproductive intentions can help programs make short-term forecasts of fertility and future demand for family planning (32, 48).

Surveys ask men whether they want to have another child.⁷ Among surveyed countries the percentage of married men who want to stop having children altogether, including those who are sterilized or whose wives are sterilized, ranges from under 5% in Chad and Niger to about 70% in Bolivia and Brazil (see Table 8). The percentage of married men who want to stop having children increased between surveys in 9 of 13 countries with repeat surveys since 1990. Only in Malawi and Zambia, however, was the increase at least 10 percentage points (see Table 8).

In 26 of 43 countries—24 in sub-Saharan Africa—more married men want to continue having children than want to stop having children (see Table 8). Similarly, in 25 of these 43 countries more women want to continue having children than to stop having children (see the companion report on surveys of women) (52).

In 34 of the 43 countries, however, fewer men than women want to stop having children. In Guinea, Jamaica, Mali, Mauritania, Nepal, Romania, Senegal, and Uganda, the gap between men’s and women’s responses is at least 10 percentage points. In the remaining nine countries where more married women than married men want to stop childbearing, the differences between men’s and women’s responses are less than five percentage points.

Surveys also ask men with children, “If you could go back to the time you did not have any children and could choose exactly the number of children to have in your whole life, how many would that be?” Men without children are asked a similar question, “If you could choose exactly the number of children to have in your whole life, how many would that be?”

Responses to these questions provide data on men’s desired, or ideal family size. Survey data about ideal family size are not as reliable a measure of fertility preferences as data on reproductive intentions. Nonetheless, they can indicate how social norms about fertility are changing and how men and women may differ in their fertility desires (4, 50).

Among 41 countries surveyed since 1990, married men’s desired family size ranges from an average of as few as 2.4 children in Bangladesh to as many as 12.3 in Niger and 15.1 in Chad. In all surveyed sub-Saharan countries except Cape Verde, and as well as in Mauritania, Morocco, and Pakistan, married men want an average of more than four children (see Table 9).

Married men’s desired family size fell in 11 of 17 countries with more than one survey since 1990 (see Table 9). In Benin, Cameroon, and Ghana, men’s average desired family size declined substantially—by as much as 2.5 children in Cameroon between 1991 and 1998. In the other six countries desired family size remained the same or increased slightly between surveys.

In 21 of 41 surveyed countries with data on desired family size among both men and women, married men on average want at least 0.5 more children than married women want. In 9 of 25 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, married men want at least two children more than do married women, and as many as 6.6 more in Chad. Outside sub-Saharan Africa the differences are much smaller (see Table 9).

As might be expected, polygynous husbands have larger ideal family sizes (and more children) than monogamous husbands in the same country (15, 17, 35, 50). Polygyny is particularly prevalent in West Africa, probably accounting for some of the large differences in desired family size between married men and women in West African countries surveyed (because a surveyed man can be married to multiple wives whereas a woman can be married to only one husband).

Nevertheless, even among monogamous couples married men want more children than married women do. The greatest differences in family size preferences among both monogamous and polygynous men occur in surveyed West African countries. Many African men may become polygynous to have the larger families that they want (17, 50).

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