This study describes the scope and health policies relating to male family planning. Family planning is the set of fertility regulations that guarantee equal rights for women, men or couples to start, limit or increase their families, as set out in Law 9.263/96, referring to the procedures used for planning, based on public health policy, which includes the Unified Health System (SUS). The main objective was to disseminate the work of the social worker in the male family planning programme at a public hospital in João Pessoa, PB, which is a reference in the definitive method of contraception, vasectomy. Medical records of men who had undergone this procedure were analysed. The importance of this programme as a disseminator of information was noted, as well as the need for it to be expanded and restructured, along with a number of actions aimed at the male public, in order to break down the paradigms that permeate vasectomy.