Use of contraceptives for birth spacing in a Nigerian city

This paper examines the use of contraceptives among women aged 15-35 in the urban area of Ilorin, Nigeria, with particular focus on use for the purpose of spacing births. Approximately 19 percent of ever-married women in the sample had used contraceptives at some time and approximately 6 percent were using at the time of the survey. Results suggest that some women have used or are using contraceptives as a substitute for prolonged periods of postpartum sexual abstinence. Whereas all groups of women in the study prefer to maintain an interval of two years between births, less traditional women no longer prefer to observe long periods of postpartum sexual abstinence. For some women, therefore, there is a wide gap between the length of preferred birth interval and the length of preferred abstinence. The magnitude of this gap is significantly associated with both ever use and current use of contraceptives. Other variables found to have a significant independent effect on contraceptive use were total number of children desired, maternal age, and maternal education.