A Review of Social Studies on Family Planning and Decline of Fertility Rate in Iran

The objective of this paper is to study the quantitative, thematic and temporal dispersion of family planning studies in Iran, which reflect the issues and trends of family planning. The method used in this study was review. The data were garnered from amongst the studies conducted between 1996 and 2012. Three databanks, containing research papers in Persian language, were searched and 28 articles out of 76 were reviewed. Two English language databanks were also searched irrespective of the date of publication and 8 articles out of 27 were reviewed. The findings of this paper show dispersion of attitudes (awareness, emotions and behavior) and preferences of men and women in researches on family planning. Education has been reported as the most effective factor influencing change of awareness, attitude and performance. Also the findings of this paper indicate that cooperation of couples is highly significant in family planning. The findings of some studies show relative convergence among religious sects, ethnicities, and origins (rural/urban) with regard to the decline of fertility rate. The findings show that researchers have not paid due attention to the role of men in decisions about fertility. Also family planning studies have not properly focused on explanation and elucidation of relationship among variables and have mainly produced descriptive statistics or have been limited to mere correlations. Some suggestions have been made in this research for future studies in this field.