By Njoki Ndun’gu

Reactions to the looming male contraceptive pill have largely been muted save for indignant concerns by some potential users.

There are apprehensions over the safety and consequences of the pill that is yet to be commercially available but that has posted encouraging results in clinic trials. These concerns are informed by the numerous side-effects associated with existing female hormone-based contraceptives such as weight gain, mood swings, loss of hair and cancer .

Despite medical assurances that the male product would be gentle to users, many men are reluctant to suffer the stress that their wives and girlfriends experience to afford them conjugal intimacy and planned families.

It is also apparent that not all potential users of the male pill harbour good intentions. Some, it seems, plan to subject it to mischief and outright abuse that could yield the same consequences that it is intended to pre-empt. I have, for instance, read in several blogs worrying man-to-man discussions of how the pill could turn out to be a tool to fool women into unwanted pregnancies!

The idea is for the man to lie to his partner about him being on the pill. Whether out of malice or a way to overcome a stubborn partner’s reluctance to have a baby when the man desires one, doing so would surely be wrong. Ideally, a couple should negotiate a consensus on when to have a child and how many of them for that matter. Resulting to subterfuge by whichever partner is wrong.

I have read elsewhere too of the expectant mistrust that the male pill would have to overcome to be genuinely acceptable as a reliable contraceptive. As one wary woman wondered, "when men say, it’s okay baby I’m on the pill… how many women are going to believe that?" There are also genuine doubts expressed in "Letters to the Editor" columns on whether men can muster sustained discipline to take their daily pill or whichever other prescribed interval without their natural distractions that could render the contraceptive impotent.

That many men approve family planning is not in contention. Some even actively support it. But it is also a fact that this number is depressingly small; that generally, many men are not actively participating in family planning preferring instead to view the activity as a women affair. The big question is why this seems to be the unwritten rule even among educated and wealthy couples.

A survey on family planning service providers, which I recently came across, isolates three major reasons for male under-participation in family planning.

First, it goes against cultural norms. Secondly, it is a woman’s business. Then there are those who cite religion dictates against it. But a careful unpacking of the trio of reasons explodes them as myths. Male involvement in family planning, particularly the spacing of children, was as an integral part of African traditions across many communities in the country. And that is the way it should be. Just like procreation is a game of two, its prevention should likewise be a shared activity. Purported adherence to divine orders to ‘go forth and multiply’ in resisting family planning needs to be check-mated with the dwindling natural resources and the stretched social-economic facilities that cannot support a big population.

The male role in family planning is critically important if unmet need for family planning is to be addressed. Available statistics on fertility rates reveal a worrying and undesirable population expansion.

There is also evidence that as a consequence of reduced focus on family planning and reproductive health by government and donor agencies, there is a steady erosion of gains in planned families realised in previous years. Today, on average Kenyan woman gives birth to 4.56 children. The figure was 3.47 in 2003! Yet demographers warn such fertility levels are dangerously unsustainable; that an ideal rate for population regeneration is 2.1 children per woman.

Men are integral to planned parenthood. At the recent Gates Foundation International conference on family planning research and best practices, the role of men was recognised in the growing menace inherent in uncontrolled population expansion. As the environment degradation in Mau and elsewhere prove, there is more to uncontrolled births than statistics. The hunger for land as a prime resource to livelihood is considered a key catalyst in ethnic unrest in the Rift Valley and the Coast.

Unchecked population inevitably exacerbates competition for resources and worsens poverty. There is a natural link between the number of children in a family and the attendant quality of life. Parents with few children often invest more resources in, say, education and health per head. This in turn has a bearing on life expectancy and other subtle manifestations like general happiness and satisfaction in life. For instance, life expectancy in Kenya was 60 in 1990 but this is down to 53 today.

In other words many of our problems have been created by our inability to manage our populations. If we were able to have fewer children and space them properly we could have effective free primary education for all, enough hospital beds for all our sick people and less jams on the roads. We would have shorter queues, more law and order and fewer fights for social and economic resources.

Incidentally, the National Population Policy captured this accurately in 2000. It notes family planning can help stabilise rural areas, slow urbanisation and environmental pressures, and ease demands on public services. Improving access to education and reproductive health services can mitigate negative effects on the environment by promoting sustainable rural population growth; increasing knowledge on sustainable development; and by stabilising urban migration.

It is for these reasons that men must take an interest in a national programme on family planning and beckon the advent of the male contraceptive pill.