A Study of Clandestine Contraceptive Use by Wife in India

Vandana Gautam, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS)

In this paper analysis is being done by utilizing couple file of National family Health Survey, 2005-06. This study shows that clandestine use is twelve percent for all female methods and seven percent for female sterilization. From the logistic regression it is clear that clandestine use is high among the women whose marital duration is more than 10 years. Educated women are more hiding their use of contraceptive then the illiterate women. However, where husband are highly educated women hiding is less. Likelihood of hiding their use is low among the Muslim and SC/ST women. Wealth has a negative effect on clandestine use. These findings indicate that, those women who hid their practice of contraception from their husbands; not do so because of they are belonging to vulnerable group but may be did so because they found it very difficult to bring up the subject of family planning with them.