Family Planning Conference

A Glimpse into 1961

By Perter Ibbotson

In mid-April, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) held a two-day course for overseas students on planned parenthood and family health, illustrating the speakers’ talks with films from various countries, including India, Hungary, Jamaica, the UK, and Southern Rhodesia. Many of these films have, in fact, been shown by the Family Welfare Association of Mauritius.

Dr C. P. Blacker, a past chairman of the I.P.P.F., opened the conference by discussing the health of the family. He favoured family planning to ensure the happiness and health of the family; large happy families exist, he said, but they are exceptional. The family income was important to the health and happiness of the family; a family income might well be large enough to support two or three children, but not eight or nine.

The family income was reflected in the conditions of the home — whether it was hygienic or insanitary; whether there was sufficient food in the right dietetic quantities; whether the home was clean or dirty; how much space there was for each member of the family; whether the home was adequately ventilated, free of damp, and free from vermin; and how much loving care and attention was available for each child. All these factors were clearly affected by the size of the family.

It is clear from Dr Blacker’s comments that in a large family there is the risk of children lacking the amount of love and care that is their birthright. The larger the family, the more inadequate their diet; in Mauritius, where families of seven and more are common, the diets of the vast majority of the population are utterly inadequate, in body building as well as in amount. Most working-class diets are deficient in meat and dairy produce (protein) and over-abundant in starchy foodstuffs such as rice (carbohydrates): that is, they are dietetically unsound.

Nor is the condition of most workers’ homes satisfactory as regards light, ventilation, and space per person. Most are overcrowded; and overcrowded homes tend towards ill health. Clearly family planning, with fewer children, is essential to raise the standard of family life in Mauritius; not merely the material standard of life as regards food and housing conditions, but the standard of loving care and attention which parents can devote to each of their children.

Dr Burton Benedict, well known to many Mauritians, followed, and drew on his Mauritian experience to illustrate his talk on motivations for family planning. He declared that family planning cannot be isolated; it is connected with many other aspects of social welfare. Here he referred to the Titmuss Report. He felt it was necessary to foster social conditions which would make family planning worthwhile; and where a family planning programme was being introduced, it should make use of any existing organisations which can be adapted.

Here again he referred to Mauritius, where the village baithkas were the model for the original family planning association’s organisation. He referred too to the “practice baby” and said that in the past the “practice baby” has often died. (In the context of historical public health, a “practice baby” refers to the traditional mindset where parents expect their first child — or early children — to die in infancy due to high infant mortality rates.) Nowadays, thanks to improved standards of medical care and attention, the “practice baby” usually lived, but the expectation — ingrained through several generations — was still that it would die. The fact has altered, he said, but not the expectation; people must accept this change of fact and must change their attitudes accordingly.

In the discussion following Dr Benedict’s talk, there was a question on the safe period. Dr Benedict said that the determination of the safe period was too long and difficult a process, and that many women found it impracticable. There was a need to define the safe period accurately. Where couples were prepared to seek marriage guidance before they were married, the value of the safe period should be included in any pre-marital talks so that a couple’s possible motivation in favour of such a method of family planning should remain unimpaired.

Mr Brouard, of the Mauritius Family Welfare Association (who was at the conference with his wife and Mr Naik), gave the conference the latest information about the Roman Catholic attitude in Mauritius following the Bishop’s pastoral letter on the Titmuss and Meade reports. Mr Brouard felt that there would be a compromise between Church and State, and that a family planning programme would be introduced with the safe period or rhythm method as the method of family planning propagated under such a programme.

Mr George Cadbury was the third speaker. He formerly had fifteen years’ experience in underdeveloped countries as an economic planner. He declared that economic planners would fail if they were unaware or regardless of population problems and family planning. He made two very valuable generalisations; first, that family planning is much more than mere birth control. It involves birth control but goes much further. Second, that in no country can it be said that parents aren’t responsible people. Few people will take no precautions against large families if they have the necessary knowledge. It is true as a basic fact, he said, that people want to limit their families; they should not be denied the necessary knowledge.

He referred to experience in many countries. In Ceylon, the Family Planning Association received about 1,000 letters a month, over 80 percent of them from fathers of three or four children who don’t want any more. The rest are from women who have had seven or eight children and don’t want more. In Japan, great things to reduce the pressure of population had been achieved, but the method used was abortion (the traditional Japanese method of family planning). However, in Japan as in other countries where abortion is widely practised, e.g., Hungary, the emphasis is being placed on contraception, and every woman who has an abortion receives contraceptive advice to enable her to avoid the possible necessity of another abortion. Poland has a well-organised family planning programme under way; India too is making tremendous strides in the family planning field without resorting to abortions. There, an additional contraceptive device is male sterilisation, provided it is voluntary, the man seeking it is already the father of three children, and the man’s wife also agrees.

In the West Indies, there is widespread knowledge of family planning methods although the practice is less wide than the knowledge. Barbados has a government-supported family planning programme; Puerto Rico has a population which is 85 percent Roman Catholic but nonetheless (and against the outspoken advice of the bishops and clergy) birth control is being propagated as Governmental policy, and over the last ten years has played a notable role in helping economic advance. (It could play that same role in Mauritius).

Mr Cadbury referred to the necessity of family planning facilities being a part of the normal health services. Family planning is normal, he said; it is essential that the World Health Organisation should immediately recognise family planning as a normal part of the health services of the world. The Government of Singapore supported the local family planning association and provided family planning propaganda at its ante-natal clinics and maternity hospitals. Other governments should follow suit.

8th Year – No 347
Friday 28th April, 1961

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 9 October 2026