Objectives: Despite the increasing knowledge about family planning and modern contraceptive methods, as well as high failure rates of the traditional method, a significant percentage of couples use withdrawal for contraception. Accordingly, the present study mainly aimed to investigate the determinants of using withdrawal to avoid pregnancy in Tabriz. Materials and Methods: The sample of the study included 383 married women aged 15-49 years. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were employed to determine factors associated with using withdrawal as a contraceptive method. Results: Based on the results, about 19.5% of the women were relying on withdrawal. In addition, 55% reported that they were currently using a modern method to avoid pregnancy while the remaining 25.5% used no method in order to prevent contraception. The results of multivariate logistic regression demonstrated that university-educated couples with no child who were within the age range of 15-24 and born in urban areas were more likely to use withdrawal rather than modern contraceptive methods (P<0.05). Conclusions: In general, the rate of employing the traditional method in Iran and, especially in Tabriz is increasing. Regarding higher proportion of withdrawal use among higher educated women due to the fear of side effects resulted from other methods, family planning providers and reproductive health services should be sensitive to the women’s concern and provide programs to decrease the unmet need of family planning.

Objectives: This study was conducted to estimate the mean ideal number of children and to determine the overall prevalence of childlessness, one child, two children, as well as three children and more as the ideal number of children in Iran. Further, the study investigated the effect size of the relationship between social factors and ideal fertility. Materials and Methods: To this end, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted on all studies on ideal fertility that were published from January 2000 to February 2018. Totally, 37 qualified papers and two national surveys were selected with a total sample size of 37,079 women. The degree of correlation between the ideal fertility and variables was calculated using Spearman’s correlation, Pearson’s correlation coefficient, and r by using MedCalc 17 software. Results: The pooled mean ideal fertility by the random effect was 2.25 in Iran. The results of the Cochran test and I2 statistics showed considerable heterogeneity regarding the prevalence of the ideal number of children (Q=1722.0911, P<0.0001, and I2 =97.62%). In addition, the proportions of childlessness, 1 child, 2 children, along with 3 children and more as the ideal parity were 0.83, 15.99, 56.092, and 22.26, respectively. The pooled correlation coefficients demonstrated that age, actual fertility, and the economic costs of children are the most important predictors of ideal fertility. Conclusions: Despite the differences in the actual fertility level in different regions of Iran, two children is the the predominant pattern of the number of desired children. This result implies a convergence of fertility ideals in Iran. If desirable conditions for childbearing are provided, fertility could be maintained at the replacement level.