Couples’ reproductive decisions are a complex phenomenon where the husband and wife take reproductive and sexual health decisions sometimes individually and sometimes jointly. Any program that intended exclusively for men or women may fail because the sexual and reproductive decisions are to be potentially made by both the partners. The ICPD document recognizes that couples are a unit. ICPD Cairo conference 1994 recognizes Gender perspective and taking reproductive decisions is a recently developed concept, which is more focused after ICPD Cairo conference 1994.The couples live in a society where their sexual and reproductive decisions are many times driven by the Father-in-law / Mother-in-law, relatives, neighbors, and friends. The couples may face challenges when his/her spouse is not in agreement for the sexual and reproductive decisions. For example, if women say that she does not want child and willing to use contraceptive to avoid pregnancy but fail to protect because her husband may want to have child and against of using the contraceptive. Therefore, the inter-spousal communication and agreement-disagreement between husband and wife for reproductive and sexual decisions drew attention for the researcher. Studies undertaken in various research reported that a low level of communication between husband and wife may lead to increase in family size, unwanted pregnancies, low level of contraceptive use and abortion cases.  

This study is going to contribute towards the couples' fertility preferences and the factors that determine such preferences, but the specialty of the study is to understand the phenomenon in two different Muslim dominated countries with having different socio-economic backgrounds. Indonesia and Bangladesh are having different kinds of socio-economic background, but the fertility decline drastically during the last three decades in both the countries. (Jones, 11977) During the same period Indonesia had seen much social and economic progress whereas Bangladesh was having very slowly way of progress.

In spite of these differences between the two countries the TFR of Indonesia (2.2, 2024) and Bangladesh (1.9, 2024) are following the similar trends despite the varied socio-economic and geographic differences between the two Muslim countries. To be precise, Bangladesh has lower TFR than Indonesia even though Indonesia is having better socio-economic status than Bangladesh. Therefore, it has become important to understand the couples’ fertility preferences in two different kinds of socio–economic & cultural environment. Whether these backgrounds related differences are really contributing towards couples’ fertility preferences and, in turn, completed family size or some other factors are playing crucial role in this direction. In this study, the couple is treated as the unit of analysis and their fertility preferences are measured based on crucial background variables.

Gender perspective and taking reproductive decisions is a recently developed concept, which is more focused after ICPD Cairo conference 1994. There are a few studies conducted to understand the couples’ reproductive decision-making process and their respective fertility preferences to determine the completed family size. Although the desired family size may not be an adequate proxy for completed fertility but the desired numbers are a fairly good predictor of completed family size. Becker has done an inter-continental study of Asia, Africa, Europe and USA and concluded that the reproductive health interventions that target couples are found to be more effective than those directed to only one sex. (Becker et al.1996).

A study conducted by using DHS data collected from 18 developing countries between 1990 and 1996 to explore and compare the husbands’ and wives’ attitudes toward fertility and contraception. Men and women in these countries desire fairly large families, however, husbands tend to want more children than their wives and do want the next child sooner. (Bankole et al. 1998)

The Demographic Health Survey data 2004 is used for this study. In both the countries information were collected from males and females. Only Muslim couples are used from the files because both the countries are having Muslim dominated population and we wanted to see the couples’ fertility preferences within the same religion but having different kinds of socio-economic, demographic and cultural environment. The total sample size of couple file was 2873 for Bangladesh and 7684 for Indonesia but in this study only Muslim couples are used as the unit of analysis. Therefore, the actual sample size included in this study is 2551 couples from Bangladesh and 6402 couples from Indonesia.

To measure the differences in couples’ fertility preferences only a few questions are taken for further analysis, which is asked from both the partners. These variables are further computed as a couple variables to compare the level of concordance between the spouses. Further, these variables are classified into three categories, namely, the desire is 'higher among husbands', ’same for both', 'higher among wives'. These categorized comparative responses are as follows-

a. Husbands' response > Wives' response (H>W)

b. Husbands' response = Wives' response (H=W)

c. Husbands' response < Wives' response (H< W)

Independent variables for the study are classified in three major groups for statistical analysis;

a. Demographic variables – Current age of women, Children ever born, Difference in couples' age & marital duration.

b. Socio-economic variables- Place of residence, Women's education, Difference in Couples' education & Wealth index.

c. Exposure variables – Women exposure to mass media, Discussion of family planning with partners, Women's mobility.

Background Characteristics

The background characteristics of the study are mainly divided into three major groups consisting of Socio-economic, demographic & exposure variables. The demographic characteristics includes in this study are current age of women, couples’ age difference, children ever born and marital duration. The socio-economic variables are wealth index, women’s education, difference in couples’ education and type of place of residence. The exposure variable includes the women’s mobility, mass media exposure and discussion of family planning with partners.

The percentages of women below age 25 are higher in Bangladesh than that of Indonesia. The difference in couples' age is less in Indonesia as compared to Bangladesh. The marital duration, children ever born, contraceptive use and mean children ever born are almost similar in both the countries. The socio-economic variables, women education and difference in couples' education are higher in Indonesia compared to Bangladesh. Women's exposure to mass media is higher in Indonesia than Bangladesh.

Couples’ Agreement and Disagreement on Ideal Number of Children by Background Characteristics 

The Table – 1 exhibits couple’s agreement and disagreement for ideal number of children by children ever born. The couples’ agreement is observed higher among less than 25 years age group as compared to other age groups in both the countries. As marital duration increases the couples’ agreement on ideal number of children decreases in both the countries.  The couples’ agreement on ideal number of children is found to be higher up to two parity as compared to three and above parities in both the countries. The type of place of residence does not have any role in determining couples’ agreement on ideal number of children in both the countries. The female education and wealth index plays an important role in building couples’ agreement on ideal number of children in both the countries but the couples’ educational difference is found to be important in Bangladesh not in Indonesia for the same. Women exposure to mass media is important in building couples’ agreement on ideal number of children whereas women’s mobility does not have any role for the same in both the countries.

Table- 1: Couples' agreement and disagreement on ideal number of children by background characteristics

Logistic Regression Result for Contraceptive Use

The purpose of doing logistic regression for the contraceptive use as dependent variable is not to find the prime determinants of contraceptive use in Indonesia and Bangladesh but to find out the linkages between the contraceptive use and the couples' agreement on ideal number of children. Therefore, the interpretation of the Table-2 will be confined to only this variable.

The regression result has shown that there is very high likelihood for using contraceptives among the couples that are having agreement on ideal number of children by 1.356 times higher in Bangladesh and 1.203 times higher in Indonesia with respect to those couples that are not having agreement for the same. The couples' agreement for ideal number of boys is found to be insignificant in both the countries. Therefore, the couples' agreement for ideal number of children may play vital role in increasing contraceptive use in both the countries.  

Table-2: Logistic regression for Couples' contraceptive use (0 = Disagreement, 1 = Agreement)

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https://bmcwomenshealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12905-023-02587-7. Article No. – 418 (2023)