Decline of supportive attitudes among husbands toward female genital mutilation and its association to those practices in Yemen.

OBJECTIVES: To elucidate the attitudes of women and their husband's towards female genital mutilation (FGM) and their associations with the continuation of FGM upon their daughters. METHODS: Subjects were 10,345 (in 1997) and 11,252 (in 2003) ever married women aged 15 to 49 years from the Yemen Demographic Health Surveys. Performances of FGM on the most-recently-born daughters were investigated. Attitudes of women and their husbands were assessed by their opinions on the continuation of FGM. The association between the attitudes of women and their husbands and performance of FGM on the most-recently-born daughters were investigated after adjusting for age and education of the women. FINDINGS: The percentage among the most-recently-born daughters who received FGM of women who had undergone FGM declined from 61.9% in 1997 to 56.5% in 2003 (p