Peer-reviewed article
Adolescent marriage and motherhood in Turkey: A qualitative study exploring determinants, impacts and opinions about preventive strategies
Ayşe Şener Taplak, Figen Alp Yılmaz ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This qualitative study examined 36 adolescent married mothers in Turkey to understand why girls marry young, what happens to them, and how to prevent child marriage. The research found that patriarchal cultural norms, poverty, and beliefs about girls' safety drive early marriage. Adolescent brides faced partner violence and psychological harm, while their children were neglected due to mothers' lack of childcare knowledge and confidence. Prevention strategies identified by participants included improving family communication and addressing poverty.
Key points
- Determinants of adolescent marriage in Turkey include patriarchal cultural norms, the perception that girls need male protection, and poverty
- Adolescent brides experienced physical, psychological and sexual violence from their partners
- Adolescent mothers had low maternal confidence, struggled with childcare, and their children were neglected due to lack of knowledge and experience
- Early marriage led to long-term psychological problems and burnout in participants' later lives
- Participants suggested prevention strategies including improved family-child communication and elimination of financial inadequacies
Limitations
As a qualitative phenomenological study with 36 participants from Family Health Centres, the findings cannot be generalised to all adolescent mothers in Turkey or predict prevalence of these outcomes. The study captures experiences and opinions but does not measure intervention effectiveness or establish causal relationships.
Abstract
AIM: This study aimed to understand the determinants of child marriages, becoming a child mother, their impacts and opinions about preventive strategies. DESIGN: The phenomenological research approach was adopted with one-to-one semi-structured interviews between December 2017 and May 2018. METHODS: 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. RESULTS: 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. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study identified the determinants and impact of adolescent marriages and revealed the problems experienced by adolescent brides and mothers. IMPACT: 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.