"I did not know what they are": Understanding Support Needs of Women around Family Planning in Rural India

With a large and growing population, India has invested significantly over the last 70 years in its National Programme for Family Planning. Despite a sustained focus on family planning, uptake of family planning practices is limited, especially for rural women. Previous research posits an awareness-intention-usage gap among rural women, and in this work, we aim to understand this gap. We conducted three FGDs, surveys, and twenty interviews to explore rural Indian women's practices relating to contraceptive usage and adoption, support received within and outside of the family, factors influencing decision-making, and aspirations from technology to meet their needs. Our findings uncover limited knowledge about contraception and body, along with insufficient counseling support from families and healthcare workers. Our findings highlight participants' desire for experiential knowledge and present the privacy levels they need. Through our work, we aim to extend the postpartum ecology, with a focus on family planning, which remains under-studied in CSCW. In view of this, we discuss widening the ecology of care around family planning based on Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory. We also discuss the implications for designing family planning interventions that are mindful of women's needs.