Peer-reviewed article
Intimate Partner Violence Predicts Child Marriage and Pregnancy Among Adolescents in Malawi
Sonal Swain, Rachel C. Kidman, Etienne Breton, Rachel Chihana, Hans‐Peter Kohler ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This research tracked adolescent girls in Malawi over four years to understand whether experiencing intimate partner violence leads to child marriage or early pregnancy. Girls who experienced physical intimate partner violence were 2.7 times more likely to enter child marriage. Girls who experienced sexual intimate partner violence were 1.97 times more likely to become pregnant. The findings suggest that preventing abuse in adolescent relationships is important for reducing early marriage and pregnancy.
Key points
- Adolescent girls experiencing physical intimate partner violence had a hazard ratio of 2.7 for entering child marriage
- Sexual intimate partner violence was associated with adolescent pregnancy (hazard ratio = 1.97)
- This is one of the first studies to establish that intimate partner violence predicts (rather than simply correlates with) child marriage and pregnancy
- The study followed girls from 2017-2018 to 2021, allowing examination of temporal relationships
- Findings indicate need for interventions focused on healthy adolescent relationships
Limitations
The study is observational and based on one cohort in Malawi, so results may not generalize to other contexts. The document does not provide information about potential confounding factors or mechanisms explaining why intimate partner violence predicts these outcomes.
Abstract
A sizeable literature has shown that child marriage is associated with an increased risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). However, this research has been cross-sectional, and the temporality of the association has not been investigated. Specifically, no study has yet examined whether IPV is a predictor of child marriage and adolescent pregnancy. This study uses prospective longitudinal data on a cohort of adolescent girls from the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health to evaluate whether IPV victimization predicts child marriage or adolescent pregnancy. Using survival models, we find that adolescent girls who experienced physical IPV (measured at survey baseline, in 2017-2018) are more likely to enter child marriages (measured at survey follow-up, in 2021) (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.7 [1.44, 5.08]). Experiencing sexual IPV is also significantly associated with adolescent pregnancy (HR = 1.97 [1.16, 3.33]). These findings indicate the need for greater intervention to ensure healthy adolescent relationships, as well as further research to understand how abusive relationships shape early transitions to adulthood.