Even in Africa, although most women want large families, there is great interest in spacing births. Such statistics imply large potential demand for family planning services. Demographers describe women who are not using contraception but want to space or limit births as having an unmet need for family planning. These numbers cannot be easily estimated, but they would surely add substantially to the 120 million figure.
Men also have unmet needs for family planning.
Steven Sinding has suggested that family planning programs replace demographic objectives with the objective of meeting unmet need. To translate this unmet need to control fertility into utilization of reproductive health services, policy makers must let clients know that these services are a safe and effective way to achieve their personal goals. Reproductive health programs can identify the obstacles that prevent women from using services and can design services and communication that will help overcome some of those obstacles. Obstacles may range from lack of supplies and services to dissatisfaction with current services to fears of contraceptive side effects, to social limits on women's mobility or decision-making.