Marriage Experience from the Girl’s Perspective: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Background: Child marriage is a marriage that is conducted formally or informally by spouses or with one of the spouses aged 18. Child marriage is a phenomenon that involves socio-cultural elements thus many factors influence it. Girls are 3 times more likely to experience child marriage than boys. Various conditions that occur in child marriage have generated interest in seeing a broader view of how married girls view their married life. Objective: This review was conducted to explore research findings related to the experiences of girls who were married under 18 years of age so that it could be used as an illustration to see the condition of girls in child marriage life. Methods: This review used three databases PubMed, ProQuest, and EbscoHost. The search for articles used main keywords, namely "child marriage", "women experience", and "marriage life" combined with helper keywords. The articles were full-text, in English, not limited by year and country, and discussed child marriage from a woman's perspective. Results: This review was done on 10 articles that were screened and analyzed out of 2259 articles. All articles used a qualitative method and were originated from Malaysia (2 articles), Pakistan (2 articles), Iran (2 articles), United States, Morocco, Jordan, and Israel. The total participants were 187 people from all articles. The causes of marriage in girls were poverty, prevention of premarital sex, adolescent pregnancy solutions, and personal desires of the girls. The state of marriage was seen from self-actualization and pressures on the role of girls in married life. Conclusion: This review summarized the reasons for marriage before the age of 18 were due to poverty factors, the avoidance of premarital sex, teenage pregnancy solutions and the willingness of girls themselves to marry. This review also summarized the situation of girls in child marriages who were unable to be self-reliant and were under pressure to perform their position in the household. Child marriage also caused new issues in the lives of girls, hence it was necessary to consider getting married at the age of under 18 years.