The Contextual Causes of Child Marriage (A case study of Women Who Have Child Marriage Experience and Recourse to Health Centers in Tabriz)

In the contemporary world, child marriage occurred in the context of some societies, and as a multidimensional phenomenon, includes those marriages took place below certain ages, according to law, religious codes or common sense. Official statistics show that East Azerbaijan has the second largest number of child marriages among the provinces of the Iran. The present study aimed at investigating the underlying causes of early/child marriage among Tabriz City’s married women, as the center of the province, it has great social, cultural and religious diversity.This study uses a qualitative methodology and thematic analysis to collect and analyze the lived experiences of women aged 15 to 35 who have child marriage experience. A purposive sampling approach is used to include 21 women in the study with various social and economic backgrounds and according to theoretical saturation criteria. Based on the content analysis used to extract the data from the interviews, 21 sub-themes and 7 macro-themes were obtained. According to these findings, early puberty, Larger body than age, patriarchy, religious prejudice, geographic location, economic poverty and living with stepchildren are the main underlying causes of child marriage in Tabriz.Precocious puberty and physical structure are more influenced by genetic characteristics, but the results of the study show, the Child marriage practice is mainly under the influence of social and cultural factors, therefore, any proper intervention to manage the problem should be socially or culturally defined, constructed, and implemented.