Abstract: This paper examines the impact of spouses’ education, fertility desires, and marital characteristics on contraceptive use in Kinshasa, Zaire. The results reveal that, while family planning services focus their activities exclusively on women, husbands’ education and fertility desire are very important in explaining the use of birth control in marriage. This male role is crucial in understanding fertility patterns in Africa, where the major familial decisions are made by the husband. The persistence of high fertility in Africa despite the implementation of family planning has defied both researchers and organizations concerned about the growth of population (Ezeh, 1992). While prior studies attributed low rates of contraceptive use to a lack of information among potential users (Uche, 1972), current data suggest that knowledge is not a determinate factor of birth control (Blanc and Croft, 1992). Instead, in some cases increases in knowledge about and practice of modern contraception have been accompanied by a rise in fertility and natural increase (Dow and Werner, 1981). As with any other innovation, the success of birth control depends on the identification of social units intervening in decisions on material reproduction, for cultural effects operate through those channels. But as of now there is no agreement about which unit to consider in studies on contraceptive use in Africa, probably because of the theoretical predominance of the Western model of the family. For some scholars, husband and wife belong to the lineages of their families of origin and should be treated separately (Lesthaeghe, 1989; Marshall, 1970). Others locate the reproductive decision with the dominate spouse’s family, away from the biological parents (Caldwell, 1983). We believe, however, that each of these social units