Abstract
"Background: Falling sex ratio is a major concern. Gender preference of young couples, their attitude towards pre natal sex determina-tion and awareness regarding re-lated social issues plays an im-portant role in determining their practice and needs to be studied.
Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional; community based descriptive study conducted in Lucknow district from August, 2012 to April, 2013. Couples were interviewed using a pre tested, semi structured questionnaire. Gender preference was assessed using the Coombs scale and atti-tude towards pre natal sex deter-mination was elicited with the help of a case study. Multi stage random sampling technique was adopted to select the couples. A total of 308 couples were interviewed.
Results: Son preference was ob-served among 64.6% of the couples while 28.1% couples were in favour of pre natal sex determination. Overall 72.1% couples were aware of unfavourable sex ratio in the country and 74.7% were aware of the harmful effects of declining sex ratio on the society. Majority (93.2%) knew that pre natal sex de-termination is a crime but only 1.6% were aware of the punish-ment for the offence.
Conclusion: The study clearly shows that son preference and pre natal sex determination still finds favour with a substantial propor-tion of young couples and empha-sises the need for proper counsel-ling and behaviour change com-munication among them.
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Key words: Gender preference;Attitude to-wards pre natal sex determination;Coombs scale;Eligible couples