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
