Husband-and-wife communication

Son preference

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Adolescent Sexuality

Voluntarism and Marriage

The Principle of Non-Coercion

Violence against Women

People no longer feel it is up to fate or the gods to determine when and how many children they will have. They now know they can choose and plan their pregnancies.

Husband-and-wife communication: Spouses actually tend to agree about family size and family planning, when interviewed separately. Unfortunately, they seldom talk with each other about family planning or sexuality, so the desire to space or limit births may go unspoken and not be acted upon.

Son preference: In Asia alone, at least 60 million girls who would otherwise be expected to be alive are "missing", due to sex-selective abortions, neglect, and in a small number of cases, infanti cide. In countries where the couples expressly prefer sons, unusual patterns of child death and distorted sex ratios at birth reflect the low status accorded to girls. When these girls survive, they are often fed less (resulting in malnutrition) and their health neglected.

The lower number of children in such countries has the unfortunate and deadly result of less tol erance for girls, especially in families that have had no sons. Laws in India and China now ban sex-determination testing. In Taiwan (Province of China), a culturally sensitive public education campaign against the practice also tells parents about the risks and possible unreliability of some forms of testing, which has lowered the number of sex-selective abortions.

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