Factors Influencing the Adolescent Marriage in a Selected Area of Bangladesh

Abstract

In Bangladesh, adolescent marriage has a long established custom, especially in the rural areas where it is a common phenomenon for the girls. The study was aimed to explore the factors associated with Adolescent Marriage in a selected area of Bangladesh. A total of 220 adolescent women aged 13 to 20 years were included in this study and the data were collected from August to December 2016 among the adolescence mothers who delivered at selected hospital by face to face interview technique using semi structured questionnaire. Data was analysed using SPSS version 20. The mean age of the respondents was 18.9±3.2 years. About 97.7% of the respondents were housewives and the majority (58.6%) had primary level of education, 46.3% of the respondents got married at the age of 14-16 years and 40.9% of them got married at the age of ≤13 years. The mean family monthly income was 8412.4±6567.6 taka and most of the respondents (81.8%) experienced their first pregnancy at the age of ≤16 years. More than half (52.3%) of the respondents mentioned that fear of dowry was the reason behind the adolescence marriage. Father’s and mother’s educational level, family monthly income and consent taken during marriage was found to be significantly associated with age of the marriage of the adolescent girls. The findings reveal that the parent’s knowledge about legal age at first marriage was very much insufficient in some part of Bangladesh. It was reported that most of the marriage decision was made by the parents without the consent of the child. Social development such as parental education and urbanization may be the important solution in the prevention of early age marriages