The Calabar Rural Maternal and Child Health/Family Planning Project

Presents an analysis of an attempt to introduce family planning to a rural area of southeastern Nigeria that has been the site of a 5 year integrated MCH/FP project. The problems of conducting and interpreting programmatic research among communities with virtually no previous use of modern contraception are also described. It was found that the introduction of modern birth control methods is hindered by a number of linguistic, cultural, and practical problems and that these methods have only minimally replaced the traditional practice of child spacing through postpartum abstinence. While the desire to use moderm family planning appears to exceed actual use, it is felt that the prevailing pronatalist values and the perceived side effects of the methods will keep both their acceptance and use-effectiveness levels low.