Every several years since 1973, the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to track fertility, family planning and reproductive health among females ages fifteen to forty-four.
The otherwise impressive and prodigious study breaks out data by nearly every category conceivable--by race, ethnicity, age, labor force participation, income, religion, and access to health care--but offers very little insight specific to mothers.
Still, some facts and findings do offer hints as to mothers' choices:
In the United States, a typical pattern of birth control use for an average woman looks like this, explains William Mosher, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics: Condom at first intercourse, followed by oral contraceptives to delay first birth (by as little as a few months or as much as twelve years on average), followed, eventually, by sterilization of either the male or female kind.
After childbirth, there's a split, with college-educated women more likely to return to the Pill after first birth than their non-college-educated sisters, who are more likely to choose the three-month injectable contraceptive (Depo-Provera) or other methods.
The Pill, which reigns supreme among non-moms, suffers a distinct slide after baby shows up on the scene: after the birth of a first child, use of the Pill drops from fifty-six percent to thirty-three percent; after a second birth, it's down to seventeen percent. Meanwhile, use of the three-month injectable and of "other methods" rises: seventeen percent use some other method after first birth, and ten percent do so after a second birth.
As I read those figures, my heart rises as well. Might those "other methods" include the diaphragm? Could it be that my groovier sisters join me in rubber-dome-dom after they've had a baby or two? Uh, yes and no, says Mosher. "Other methods" does indeed include the diaphragm, but it also includes a ton of other options--the Implant, the Patch, Lunelle (a one-month injectable that was recalled in 2002 and has yet to return to the market), the IUD, calendar rhythm methods, temperature rhythm methods, withdrawal, and spermicides.
Okay, that's a lot of company to be sharing ten percent with, I admit. To more clearly demonstrate the diaphragm's current level of popularity, if we can use that word, Mosher directs me to another table. Among all women aged fifteen to forty-four, a whopping point-two percent use the diaphragm, which puts it tied for dead last with periodic abstinence/natural family planning. Ouch.
Gradually, sterilization becomes the leading method of birth control. Between ages forty and forty-four, fifty-one percent of contraceptors overall choose female sterilization. Male sterilization goes up as well, but more slowly: among men forty to forty-four, eighteen percent are likely to have had a vasectomy.
Memo to pain-averse spouse: Are you paying attention here, darling?
