Contraceptive practices in Mexico: Two five-year periods, two different patterns (1976-1977 to 1987)

Abstract

Until prior to the 1970s, government, administration in Mexico had adopted a policy (implicit or explicit) with a pronatalist tendency, because they considered that a large population would foster the country's development. However, due to the economic crisis the country began to experience towards the close of the 1960s, the Mexican government issued the General Population Law, of an antinatalist nature, in 1973.

As of that time, efforts began to be made to organize the activities necessary for the official introduction of family planning on a national level. On the basis of the information gained from the Mexican Fertility Survey (1976-1977), the National Demographic Survey (1982), and the National Fertility and Health Survey (1987), this article aims to present the evolution of the patterns of contraceptive practice in the country, in accordance with the population's sociodemographic profile before and after the introduction of the National Plan for Family Planning.

The results obtained evidenced different trends in the five- years periods under review. In the first one, from 1976-1977 to 1982, the use of contraceptive methods increased significantly among certain subgroups of the population (rural women, those with limited schooling, and young women). During the second one, from 1982 to 1987, although some rises were to be observed in the proportion of women using contraceptives, such increases were less intense and more homogeneous, i.e., the differentials among the various subgroups of the population showed marked decreases. Thus, one of the main hypotheses stemming from this article refers to the fact that when the intensity of the actions derived from family planning diminishes, some women probably returned to their former patterns of uncontrolled fertility. On the other hand, the contraceptive behavior of the younger women suggests the formation and strengthening of a "contraceptive culture."