Couple's pregnancy ambivalence in Indonesia

In survey data, women often express ambivalence about future pregnancies. Little is known about the level of ambivalence in men or whether a woman's report of pregnancy ambivalence is related to her partner's desires for additional children and/or his own pregnancy ambivalence. The Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey 2002/3 provides a unique opportunity to examine ambivalence using a matched couples dataset. Information on contraceptive use, fertility desires, and whether a pregnancy in the near future would be a problem for the respondent is analyzed for a sample of 5,148 couples. Ambivalence is surprisingly high in this population, especially among husbands: 72% of husbands and 56% of wives who are currently using contraception say that a pregnancy in the next few weeks would be “no problem.” However, while husbands and wives show a fairly high level of agreement on the use of contraception and fertility desires, couple agreement is much lower on whether a future pregnancy would be a problem or not (Kappa=0.73, 0.63, 0.26, respectively). Although agreement is fairly low, a multivariate regression model of currently contracepting couples who wanted to limit or delay a birth for more than two years shows that a husband's response of “no problem” to a pregnancy in the next few weeks is strongly and positively associated with a wife's response of “no problem” to a future pregnancy (OR=3.31, CI=2.57-4.26). These results indicate that pregnancy ambivalence should be an important consideration for programs aimed at increasing contraceptive continuation in Indonesia. Husbands were shown to be important actors in shaping women's fertility attitudes.