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Contraceptive decision making is likely to become more complex when male oral contraceptives are marketed and as sex‐role preferences become more egalitarian. A mailed survey of 47 married couples selected from a newspaper “Birth Listing” column in Columbus, Ohio was used to contrast spouses' views, to assess levels of actual and perceived consensus among partners, and to identify predictors of greater stated likelihood of male pill usage. Modest support was found for the hypothesis that more egalitarian sex‐role preferences are positively related to a greater belief in contraception as a shared responsibility, wives: r = .35, p < .01, husbands: r = .21, p < .10. No support was found, however, for the hypothesis that beliefs in shared contraceptive responsibility would lead to greater acceptance of a male pill. Wives were also more accurate, r = .57, p < .001, than husbands, r = .21, p < .08, in perceiving then‐spouse's attitudes toward male pill adoption. Results suggest that researchers need to focus on the process by which contraceptive usage is negotiated and renegotiated among married couples.
Marsiglio et al. (Sun,) studied this question.