women in Bicol have the least desire to have children?

Married women 15-49 years old in the Bicol Region have the least desire to have children, compared to other regions in the country. Ironically, they are also the second least users of any family planning method. These findings are based on the 2005 Family Planning Survey conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
 

Only 43.2 percent of the women covered by the survey in the region were using family planning methods. This figure is second only to Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) at 15.9 percent, the lowest among regions in the country.

When the same women were asked their reason for not using any contraception method, only 15.7 percent wanted to have children. This percentage is the least among women in the country who gave the same reason. Thus, the region’s unmet need for family planning is pegged at 25.9 percent, also the second highest in the country. Unmet need for family planning is the proportion of currently married women who are not using any method of family planning but do not want any more children or prefer to space births.

Unmet need for family planning is categorized into two – unmet need for spacing and unmet need for limiting. Unmet need for spacing includes pregnant women whose pregnancies were mistimed, amenorrheic women whose last births were mistimed, and women who want to wait two or more years for the next birth but are not currently using any form of family planning. Amenorrheic women are those who have just given birth and are not currently using a contraceptive method and whose menstrual period has yet to return.

The region’s unmet need for spacing is at 11.4 percent, the fourth highest in the country. This means that 11.4 percent of women were not using any form of family planning even if they wanted to wait for two or more years for the next baby to come.

Unmet need for limiting, on the other hand, includes pregnant women whose pregnancies were unwanted, amenorrheic women whose last births were unwanted, and women who no longer want to have children but are not currently using any form of family planning to avoid pregnancy. Unmet need for limiting in the Bicol Region is pegged at 14.5 percent, the highest among regions in the country. This means that 14.5 percent of women were not using any form of family planning even if they no longer wanted to have children.

Women in the region also had the second highest total fertility rate (TFR) of 4.3. This means that, on the average, there are 4.3 children born to a woman in the region. This rate comes close to Region VIII’s (Eastern Visayas) TFR of 4.6 –the highest among regions, based on the 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) conducted by the NSO. At the national level, the TFR is only 3.5.

 
While most women in Bicol Region desire to have fewer children, most of them also do not use any contraceptive method and the region has the second highest number of children ever born to a woman. These realities are what population policy makers and implementers are facing today.

The government’s population policy is anchored on the four pillars of Responsible Parenthood, Informed Choice, Birth Spacing and Respect for Life. Considering these, the region has still a long way to go in order to achieve a lower fertility rate or at least achieve the desired number and spacing of children by which couples can afford to have by using the appropriate family planning method of their own free choice without resorting to abortion.
 

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