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Family planning and nutrition: Fundamentals to a responsible parenthood

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Category: Region 10

Family Planning and Nutrition InfographicsAccess to safe, voluntary, acceptable, and affordable family planning advance several human rights that include the right to life and liberty, freedom of expression, and the right to work and quality education.

By definition, family planning refers to means and methods that allow individuals to decide if and when to have children. This includes a wide range of contraceptives that include pills, implants, intrauterine devices, surgical procedures that limit fertility opportunities, and barrier methods such as condoms as well as non-invasive methods such as the calendar method and/or abstinence.

In the context of family planning, nutrition has myriad direct and indirect ways of outcome. A family with numerous children having no stable and improving economic capacity to provide the needs of the offspring could lead to detrimental effects on their nutrition and health status. Simply by not being able to provide basic necessities such as nutritious food and shelter. Food insecurity causes famine that would result to malnutrition. Consequently, malnutrition is the basic root of diseases and worst death.

Meanwhile, family planning does not only limit to the methods that can be used to schedule pregnancy. It offers valuable information about how to become pregnant when it is desirable and the amount of preparedness to become a responsible parent. Thus, the scope covers as well the ability to treat infertility among people who desire to conceive.

The concept of family planning is central to gender equality and women empowerment that address the autonomy to plan when to have children, and how many. When women are better enabled to complete their education, women’s liberty within their households is increased, therefore, their earning power is improved as well. This strengthens their economic security as a family. Further, family planning is among the key factors in reducing poverty rate across borders.

Women of cross-boundaries are still using futile and perilous family planning methods. Due to reasons not limiting from lack of access to information or services to lack of support from their partners and even communities. Thus, threatens their ability to build a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities mostly.

Integrating family planning and nutrition increases wide reach and promising impact. Oblivious family planning is one of the causes of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. Negligence as early as adolescent nutrition, sexual, and reproductive health can cause detrimental effect later on. Malnutrition during pregnancy, particularly those that are high-risk teenage pregnancies can lead to low birthweight and stunting, thus, increase the risk of death for both mothers and newborns.

Children from unintended pregnancies may be at risk of poor nutrition. Family planning indirectly affects nutrition via its impact on infant and young child feeding practices. When births are well spaced, mothers have more time, energy, and resources to adequately breastfeed and feed their young infants and children.

Likewise, lack of access and knowledge to family planning can lead to major nutrition and well-being fluctuation to a great degree individually and economically including:

  • Increasing trend on HIV and other sexually transmitted disease that could potentially decline the nutritional status of women and women of gestational age;
  • it can further stage inequality by reducing the opportunity for girls and women to complete their education, secure good employment, and/or even participate as fully functional individual in the society; and
  • abridge economic development due to diminished women participation, innovation and earnings in global setting.

Through integrating nutrition into family planning programs, the possibility to achieve healthier pregnancies and reassuring birth outcomes are more pronounce. Hence, it is the passport to reduce the rates of stunting, wasting, child, infant and maternal mortality particularly in the developing countries. (Development Management Officer II (PNFP) Gwyn Y. Balaba/This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it./0963-1090-198)

 

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