An Assessement of the Family Planning Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of in-school Teenage Mothers in Homabay Sub-county

Abstract

A sample of 82 in school teenage mothers of ages 13years to 19 years were randomly drawn from primary schools within the Sub-County. In the study, social, cultural, economic and demographic variables are examined. The social variables include Age of the teenage mothers, exposure to mass media, and the effect of sex education. Cultural variables include religion, early marriages and myths around Family planning. Demographic variables include age, sex, number of siblings and birth order. The list of all primary schools in Homabay Sub County provided the sampling frame from which sample schools were selected. From the selected schools, the next stage was to select the classes which were class 5,6 7 and 8 then the individual respondents. The main objective of this study was to examine the knowledge, attitudes and practice of Family planning among in-school teenage mothers in primary school in Homabay. Random sampling was done in each, stage and the data was collected using questionnaires. The major statistical techniques used in data analysis are frequencies, percentages and cross tabulation. This found that most of the adolescents are aware of family planning methods but they were not familiar with the application of most of the methods. Health facility was leading with 34.6 % being the most mode of giving family planning information while friend at 22% and school and others 14.2% respectively. They were the main and the most frequent source of information on family planning methods. Most adolescents are in favor of contraception and they are also of the opinion that family planning and suggestions from the teachers and social workers was that sex education should be introduced in the school syllabus. The number of contraceptive methods known and tire number of contraceptives whose application are known is best explained by adolescents level of education, those whose age is between 13 to 19 years, and those of the protestant faith. The family planning methods known to the adolescents were as follows: Injectable (30.3 %), Pill (24.3 %) and Implant (22.0%). While condoms (15.1%) was the least known and others less than 15%. It was also found that in-school teenage mothers have positive attitude towards contraceptive mainly because of HIV/AIDS pandemic which a great thing. With regard to actual practice, about 42.5 % of the in-school teenage mothers said they have ever used family planning at the time of the survey. The Injectable, followed implants and then condoms and others at 10.3% and 7.7 % respectively. This is mainly due to the strong attitude they have that injectable is the safest way of preventing unwanted pregnancy and also might have minimal side effects. The results also shows that in-school teenage mothers were using contraceptives to avoid making the second mistake of getting pregnant, majority of those not using family planning were not sexually active. It is recommended that family life education be introduced in-schools with a view of making Teenagers mothers understand the consequences of early sexual intercourse and how they avoid it. Parents and teachers have a role to play in counseling adolescents on family life education and more importantly on HIV/AIDS which is making significant in-road among the adolescent‟s population, radio, newspapers and books/pamphlets should be used to reach the teenagers on family planning issues.