Adolescent marriage and motherhood in Turkey: A qualitative study exploring determinants, impacts and opinions about preventive strategies.

Abstract

This study aimed to understand the determinants of child marriages, becoming a child mother, their impacts and opinions about preventive strategies. The phenomenological research approach was adopted with one-to-one semi-structured interviews between December 2017 and May 2018. The population of the study consisted of 36 adolescent married mothers registered in the Family Health Centres. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and evaluated based on a thematic analysis was conducted. In the study, four main themes and 12 subthemes were determined. Adolescent marriages determinants occurred as patriarchal cultural norms, the perception that girls would be safe under the protection of another man, and poverty. Adolescent brides experienced partner violence and were subjected to physical, psychological and sexual violence in their marriage. Adolescent mothers had low maternal self-confidence, childcare challenges and were late to take on childcare responsibilities, and their children were neglected. As a result of early marriage, the participants experienced psychological problems and burnout later in their lives. Improving family-child communication, and eliminating financial inadequacies were among the opinions on prevention strategies of child marriages. The findings of this study identified the determinants and impact of adolescent marriages and revealed the problems experienced by adolescent brides and mothers. The most important contribution of this study is that it deals with the motherhood experiences. In addition, it is one of the important findings of this study that it draws attention to their neglected children's due to lack of knowledge and experience of their mothers about childcare.