Birth control today; 1; Why Study Birth Control?

WB AA presents a birth control today. Freedom and responsibility. This is a series of programs about birth control and how it affects us and our society. Today we look into the importance of studying contraception and family planning in why study birth control. 4 8 12 16. Every second you are living for new lives begin on our earth 240 per minute 14000 per hour. Three hundred forty five thousand per day in one thousand sixty nine approximately one hundred twenty five million babies were born. Fifty two million people died. Here is the United Nations projection of world population growth given by Mrs. Herschel hunt vice president of the Lafayette Indiana Planned Parenthood Federation. From the beginning of time to 16:50 we went to a little over a half a billion population of the world from 16 50 to

1850 a period of two hundred years. We picked up another billion people. From 1850 to 1950. One hundred years. We picked up another billion people to two and a half billion. From 1950 to 1975 25 years we picked up a billion and a quarter more people to three and three quarters billion population of the earth. From 1975 to the year 2000. It's projected that the population will double again to seven and a half billion people in the world. This is unprecedented in geometric population growth is the result of man's rapid application of medical science and technology particularly in developing countries cutting death rates and increasing life expectancy at birth. There's a treatment has created a disequilibrium and on balance with the result of high birth rates untouched and a continual increase in the number of people living on Earth. Former

Alaskan Senator Ernest groaning and Representative Morris K. Utah from Arizona recently sounded some warnings to the House subcommittee studying the problems of population growth. They said mankind will lose control of his environment and bring about the deterioration of the human species unless he finds the answer to the population crisis within a short time. They reported that the painfully present problems today urban crowding soaring crime rates choked time when airport traffic racial strife campus disorders poverty pollution growing tax burdens have all been caused or intensified by spiraling population. These would seem to reveal a feeling of crisis or emergency to find out more about the problem counting Gary interviewed Dr. Harvey Marshall professor and demographer a produce University. She asked What are the implications of the population explosion for the world. I would say they are OK. There are. Very nicely implications but they're also OK

for the other developed world. It means very proud of these guys is very unlikely that they get their present perfect. We're going to. The. Congress have estimated that. About 4 percent. National must be invested. To. Take care of a 1 percent population that needs to clothe feed them to educate them so. Consequently when you're talking about a country going 3 percent a year this implies a 12 to 15 percent of that country's income must be reinvested merely to keep pace merely to prevent this this country or this region from falling behind. Which in fact is what has been happening. They have been running them to death at this rate. Consequently. They are not industrialized. There are also implications. For the United States in the face with this high

pressure. There are a number of responses that these underdeveloped countries might take. One dangerous possibility from the point of view of the United States. Is that these countries will turn in desperation to Communist communist beginning all she's. Another very real possibility is that their own re-asked will become so intense and become focused on the have countries that it is in. Think that there will be no creasing political instability in recent riots and so on. Related to this is the possibility that countries such as China will become increasingly expansionist. The United States is even now faced in Asia with a special expansionist China. This pressures internal pressure will become even greater in the years to come. Control. Controlling. This is obviously not only a political question but one that lends itself to alternative

answers in wind broken for oil is probably the only hope for these countries. In the West. Birth control is used to track their population growth rather quickly. Then. There is. These possibilities that we've talked about. There is also the possibility that other sorts of policies can be cruel. The birth rate has passed raising the age of marriage from the fact that this will be great. However again. In July 1969 President Nixon requested in the first presidential message on population ever sent to Congress a three fold increase in government spending on family planning. The president proposed that Congress set up a commission on

population growth and the future and has directed government agencies to undertake additional research on birth control methods of all types train more people to work in family planning programs and increase the number of adequate family planning services in the United States within the next five years. Here are the words of the president. One of the most serious challenges to human destiny in the last third of this century will be the growth of the population whether man's response to that challenge will be a cause for pride or for despair in the year 2000 will depend very much on what we do today. If we now begin our work in an appropriate manner and if we continue to devote a considerable amount of attention and energy to this problem then mankind will be able to surmount this challenge. How can mankind surmount the challenge. We can either increase the death rate increase the world food supply and means of sustenance or decrease the birth rate for humanitarian reasons few are in favor of increasing the death rate. Why increase the

amount of human suffering already present in the world. Mass starvation and political chaos are not desirable. What about the second choice increase in the world food supply. Even in food research does solve the problem of feeding the world the rising flood of people is bound to jeopardize the quality of life and our environment. That leaves the third choice a humane and rational reduction of the birth rate. Still with increased research in food development. As Robert McNamara president of the World Bank Group said in an address at the University of Notre Dame in May 1969 is a reduction of the birth rate feasible. It is is it simple. It is not. Is it necessary. Without question it is necessary because the consequences of continuing the present population growth rates are unacceptable. Now were is the population exploding. Many people think that it's a poor but it really isn't the poor who is doing all of this to poor or having more children they want. This is

true but in the United States. 20 percent of the poor are 21 percent twenty one point eight of the poor. Had. Eight hundred ninety six thousand members. The near poor 10 percent four hundred eight thousand but the non poor are the ones who are really having the children sixty point sixty eight point to four million 100000 births in the United States in 1965. The non-pro think we can afford them. Well they mean that we can probably keep some food on the table keep them dressed and send them to school but this lacks a whole lot of being the whole story because it takes about it it's been estimated that it takes a thousand dollars a year per person to provide public services such as schools roads police rider space and other public services. Who pays for that. The family that has the children. You know we all pay.

I mean through taxes these things come through taxes in an address at the 969 annual meeting of Planned Parenthood world population. Dr. Roger o Agha burg assistant secretary for health and scientific affairs in AGW said the predictable growth in the American population will produce grave challenges to our society. We need to be deeply concerned about our capacity to provide the social resources that will be needed in the next 30 years by another hundred million Americans. I think we are going to have to work for a change in national mores a change based on public acceptance of the demographic facts of life. I think we're going to have to help the people of this country understand that their vital interest and that of their children demands that we control the growth of population. In recent years family planning has been receiving an increasing amount of attention from public agencies and has been discussed in both lay and professional publications. The International Planned Parenthood Federation unites 63 family planning associations

throughout the world. Its work is based on the belief that knowledge of Planned Parenthood is a fundamental human right and that a balance between world population and natural resources is a necessary condition of human happiness. Economic progress and peace. Therefore the Federation aims to advance knowledge and practice of contraception everywhere. Encourage men is given for the integration of family planning in health and social welfare programs in developing countries where medical facilities are being expanded as well as in countries where contraception has previously been left outside public health programs. The U.S. childrens bureau has approved the use of maternal and child health funds for family planning activities also through the Office of Economic Opportunity family planning services have been supported in many parts of the country. A lot of concern people are jumping on the bandwagon and it's not just for a great contribution to the whole of society. They believe that family planning can give individual families many advantages. Research backs this up. In

April 1967 at the Grose conference on marriage and the family in Puerto Rico Dr. Harold Christiansen professor of sociology at Purdue University reported on his research on children in the family and the relationship of their number and spacing to marital success. This paper was later published in the main 1068 Journal of Marriage in the family and printed for the Institute for the study of social change at Purdue. We talked to Dr. Christensen about his findings. The relationship between marital affairs. Yes clearly and I think research bears on. Statistical relationships. That are relevant here where discussing family limitation. Taking on the problem of numbers let me refer to some research of my own. At Purdue University in the early 1950s. With a graduate student

Robert Philbrick. We studied better than 300 couples. Who had one or more children. Some of them had children others were childless. We interviewed these couples. Getting a battery of information. Including a measurement of their marital adjustment. And their desires regarding. Family size and the children they had or did not have. And then we worked out the statistical relationships. Now one thing rather interesting was. Finding. That there is a negative relationship with this produce group. Between number of children. And marital adjustment. This may appear surprising at first. But let's let's see how it relates to other questions.

We found that the childless couples have the. Highest marriage adjustment scores. Those with one child. Next. Those with two children. The next highest. We couldn't go much beyond two children because these were young couples and many had not yet achieved that point in their family. But a negative relationship. Then we asked the question how many children do you desire during the entire course of your married life. And their answers to this varied I asked. The larger proportion indicating about three children. We were related statistically in their answers to that question. Their marriage attachments go ours and here we found a. Positive relationship. That is the more children they want and.

The higher their marriage adjustment up to about three or four children. Probably reach the point of diminishing returns in their mind. At that point. But a part of the relationship between desired number of children and marriage Assman a negative relationship between actual number of children and marriage ask them why this discrepancy why this difference between the two. I think the explanation has to be. That these young people under their present circumstances. They didn't want children and when children came anyway they tended to work against their marriage adjustment. Whereas eventually under other circumstances they may work the other way. And this is brought out by another question we ask in this same study. We said what all of your children planned. And roughly one third said yes. Two thirds indicated that at least one of their

children had been unplanned at the time of conception. We related their answer to that question to the marriage adjustment score. And found. A considerably higher average married Jesmyn score. By those who said all of their children were planned. In other words where the number of children lined up with the desired number. The lower. Marriage adjustment score. For those who said. They had unplanned children whether it be a discrepancy between the two. So apparently it isn't just. How many children you have that's crucial to the marriage adjustment but whether or not you're successful in controlling the number of children. To line up with your desires are values health. How about space and marital status. Here to let me refer to. Research of my own. Conducted

over the last. Couple of decades. I have involved three cultures. Studying. The phenomenon of child spacing. And focusing focusing upon. The phenomenon of premarital pregnancy. In this. Method of record which has been developed. Where I went to official marriage records. Matched them on an individual case basis with. The birth records. So that by comparing the two I could calculate the interval between marriage and birth of the first child. And of course where that interval is too sharp. I could conclude pre-marital conception. And then linking the same individuals with the divorce records. In order to be able to work out divorce rate. For a different spacing interval groups. Now. Comparing. Three cultures. Rather

conservative. Mormon culture in Western United States is. A somewhat typical American culture in Midwestern United States. And a very permissive art liberal. Scandinavian culture in Denmark. I found as expected the highest premarital pregnancy rates in Denmark. And the lowest in the Mormon culture western United States. But the major concern was to compare these cultures according to. The. Fact. Premarital pregnancy. And that divorce we used as an index. Of negative effect. In all three cultures I might say to start with the premarital consumers showed higher divorce rate than the post-American savers which seems to support the chastity no harm.

However the difference between these two in Denmark was very small. The Premarital consumers had a higher divorce rate than the post-American savers there but not very much higher. In Midwestern United States. The difference between the two. Groups in divorce rate was considerable. And in the inner mountain region of western United States the essentially Marman sample the difference was still greater. That is the premarital conceive it had a very much higher divorce rate than the post marriage. Seniors. Any explanation seems to be that. In the modern culture premarital conception where it took place. Was a violation of the arms. And hence negative effects were greater. Whereas in. Denmark.

Premarital conception was expected more or less normal thing. Not much social stigma. Attached to it. Or. Nation. For couples who are. So engaged. And so there wasn't much negative effect. As reflected. Through higher divorce rates. There. I think this essentially shows that. In the spacing of children. And here we've only love looked at the premarital pregnancy groove or. The spacing itself. Is not so important. As how they spacing lines up our failures to line up with the arms of the group. And hence the values of the individuals. How would you sum up how this is related to birth control. Well I would say that. Couples who. Understand and

effectively. Use. Birth control in their marriages. Are in a better position. To have. The children they want. When they want them. And hence. Not. Suffer this. Discrepancy between values and. What actually takes place. This research that I've reported indicates that value behavior discrepancy. The Gap. Between. What one wants and what my guess is what causes the difficulty. So that to the extent that. Control can be protected. Married couples can. Intelligently use it. They're in a better position to govern your lives manage their lives. In the cards with their values. In this regard they can. Be more contented. Happy.

Marriages. In 1967 the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution concerning birth control. It said that family planning by assuring greater opportunity to each person phrase man to attain his individual dignity and reach its full potential. No longer do a husband and wife have to accept however many children come along. The woman of today is the first in history to be free to live a full and complete relationship with her husband. Together they can decide with reason and planning when they are prepared to be parents. Dr. Mary Elaine a staff member of the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau helps women who come to the clinic seeking advice on birth control. She feels family planning is a noble cause. I think you know because I feel like this is a personal issue. I think that to have worked closely in the field. Time cannot help but the change in

personality only felt that he had no control whatsoever about the number of children that she was. When she had control of her destiny it means so much from the press standpoint but I don't think she can do what she can for her children from the standpoint of life. No longer do women go to school far more than get married have a family and live happily ever after. A more accurate life pattern of the modern woman includes school work and or marriage rearing a family and a return to work when the youngest child is in school. This quiet revolution in the life pattern of American women presents a special challenge to those responsible for the counseling of girls. Today there

is concern for developing and utilizing human resources. This involves long range planning not only for education and career but for the planning and spacing of children. University's dean of women's office has a special program called spam plan designed to help college women plan for a total life. How in the flame and past dean of women a producer and seeing as this is associate dean of women are the two principal spand planners working with the program. We asked Mr Layman to explain the spam plan program the name of course simply refers to the fact that staff members they are the dean of women feel that women should. My own brother for life span and not just for the first third of their lives or the first half of their lives but for the whole family. What approaches do you use to help young women plan their lifespan. Well our main approach as far as the great number of young women is concerned it is through a national conference

from which the office the deep holes with fresh lemon every every fall semester. Beginning with the orientation program we have one station good incoming women students at that time. When Lee tries to give them some picture of what the changing life patterns of women around the country are and tell them about the prediction that. Practically all of them will be working outside their home to pay it or insure their life even with what they planned or not. You know part of building they will be working outside their homes for pay and who feel that they ought to plan to do the kind of thing they'd like to do. Trouble now is that there are literally millions of women in the labor force but a great many of them are working at things that we might not choose to do if they were prepared to do that and I'd like to do. Now you have a

large group conference and then you have I thought I read through all the sessions GUEST What do you do everything all every fall. Working with Mrs. Sherman and this is all of them have been coordinating this program the last few years. Just for you. We have worked out a small group of four or five with one upper class woman who has volunteered to help us there and one staffers. For them. They meet in the office of the staff person they meet. They are invited to come first and are invited to come during the time and I do not have a class on their schedule and it's purely voluntary. They may come or not as they choose but we've invited everybody and they seem to enjoy the opportunity to talk with the staff person as upperclassmen about their hopes and dreams and long term plans for this kind of thing for their own lives. Do you

recommend that young women today as they're planning their lifespan also consider birth control and family planning. I should think they'd almost have to. And I think I'm just assuming that they do because I just I don't think I see any other intelligent way to do it. And I think the information part of the Saudis I think I think of them at least that's part of why we live in an international scientific age. Man has answered many of nature's probing questions and the light is finally dawning on the old question of birth control. There are still many problems both medical and social. Not all methods are reliable and there recently been strong questions on the safety of the pill. Not all social groups accept certain types of birth control measures. Part of society's objection has been based on religious considerations such as the continuing Catholic position that any

artificial interference with conception violates a primary purpose of marriage which is procreation. Part of it has been political based on the belief that large numbers of children are necessary to keep a nation prosperous and strong as we grow in numbers though and as social and material resources are becoming scarce men are beginning to change their attitudes toward controlling population. The advent of modern contraception is bound to be affecting our social and moral structures. This program series will continue to probe into the questions of birth control today. This has been birth control today. Freedom and responsibility. The next programme in the series deals with the medical aspects of birth control methods. This program was written and produced by Colleen Garrett and narrated by David Brody recording engineer is Boris Moggridge. ANNOUNCER Roger agrees. The series is presented to the instructional radio division of WBA a University in

West Lafayette Indiana. This is the national educational radio network.