The development of family planning in Finland from the 1960s to the 1990s

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the development of family planning in Finland from the 1960s to the 199Os by comparing the results from several studies representing the entire country. First we will examine ideals concerning family size and the spacing of children. We will then focus on the conditions necessary for families to realize these ideals, which will include an examination of what families know about birth control and what contraceptive methods are available to them. Finally we will assess how family size ideals were realized - did the final number of children correspond to the family size set as a goal. ln the 1960s and the 1970s Finns were already considering a relatively small family as ideal, and essentially there has been no change in this ideal. The realization of family size ideals was still hindered in the early 1970s by the scarcity of information about sexual matters and the use of unreliable birth control methods. Couples ended up with a larger family than what they had considered ideal. With the spread of reliable contraceptive methods and the increase in knowledge about sexual matters starting in the 1970s, the final number of children in a family started to correspond to the ideal at the end of the decade. At the end of the 1980s the final number of children was already smaller than the ideal. Because there are deficiencies in the comparability of the studies made at different points of time, the results presented in the article should be examined with reservations, and seen mainly as demonstrating trends at the group level.