‘The Doctor’s Way’: Traditional Contraception and Modernity in Cambodia

In Cambodia modern contraceptives are cheaply available and morally acceptable, yet unmet need remains high. Furthermore, some wealthy, educated, urbanites are choosing to shun modern methods in favour of traditional contraceptives. This paper explains this seemingly counter-intuitive behaviour. The research design takes a mixed methods approach, initially using data from the Cambodian DHS 2005 to assess trends in contraceptive use and logistic regression to analyse traditional method use. The likelihood of using traditional, rather than modern, methods, increased as education and wealth increased. Taking these findings and the questions they raise as a departure point, 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in Cambodia. Periodic abstinence, labelled ‘traditional’ by demographers, is known locally as ‘the doctor’s way’; regarded as suitable only for ‘knowledgeable people’ who use the foreign calendar. Furthermore it conforms to dominant Khmer ideals of femininity. Behaviour that appeared counter-intuitive - wealthy educated women choosing traditional over modern methods – is explained when viewed within the specific context and system of meaning. The research contributes to anthropological demography by bringing approaches and methods from medical anthropology to the typically demographic issue of contraceptive use.