Secondary School Level

Outline: Explaining the meaning of family planning. Techniques for birth control. Importance of family planning. Government’s role. Compare to orthodox and modern families.

Family planning can be explained as a deliberate effort in adapting suitable methods to restrict the growth of families. In other words, family planning refers to the natural and artificial birth control methods that helps in controlling the size of the family and the gap between the children.

Family planning includes thoughtful limitation on the family's size. Family planning in country like. India is very necessary to check the rate of births. The parents must plan when to have child and the use of techniques to implement such plans. The techniques commonly used includes; sex education, prevention of sexually transmitted infections and infertility management. Considering population explosion, increase in inflation and scarcity of resources, the family trends have shifted to nuclear families with number of children limited to one or two.

Due to limited economic resources, family planning has become very important. The rising population has to face acute shortage of various commodities. Even with an annual growth in agricultural production, large section of Indian population always lives from hand to mouth. This condition can be further worsening if the growth rate of population is not checked. Thus, family planning must be strictly followed to restrict the growing population.

The government has shown a strong awareness of serious and urgent need of family planning. For this, they have implemented the five- year plans. However, it is difficult to handle the backward village population. Still some orthodox people in our country consider the birth of child as an act of God. On the other hand, the modern families living in the urban areas quickly respond to the needs and methods of family planning. It is right to say that family planning involves high amount of self-control, sacrifice and certain amount of self- determination.

There is a large gap between awareness and practice of family planning though a widespread alertness has been made. This gap has to be bridged. Today family planning is backed on the ground of explosion of country's population. Having more than two children in a family can make an adverse effect on mother's health. Moreover, the future of the children can be in danger in terms of health and education. According to the UNO'S population report, within next four decades (that is by 2050) lndia’s population will be 165.8 crores. Thus, it will be the most population nation in the world.