This paper examines the relative roles of men and women in making decisions regarding childbearing and the use of traditional and modern methods of family planning, using quantitative and qualitative data collected in Malawi. Contrary to what many other studies have suggested, the results show that men have traditionally played a limited role in making decisions relating to initiation of childbearing, and the use of various traditional methods of contraception. When it comes to modern contraceptives, however, men are demanding to be consulted and give consent before their wives use the methods. Men’s demand to have direct involvement in making decisions about use of modern contraceptives seem to be motivated by several differences in the perceived characteristics of traditional and modern methods. One is the setting in which they are provided: modern methods are provided in a modern institutional setting, and are thus associated with modernity and progress. Men are expected to play a leading role in the domain of the modern. Clinics are modern, but the integration of family planning with maternal and child health clinics makes these clinics women’s spaces. Traditional methods are also administered by women, and in women’s spaces, but they are administered in the village by elderly women whom the men trust. Secondly, the perceived greater effectiveness of modern methods influences men who are suspicious about their wives’ faithfulness to exert more control over these methods than over the traditional ones because they believe that the more effective the contraception the more likely the woman is to cheat on them. The changes in the reproductive decision-making structure that are brought about by modern methods are bound to increase the role of the couple as a decision-making unit and reduce the influence of the elderly women’s establishment on reproductive matters