Factors associated with teenage marital pregnancy among Bangladeshi women

Teenage pregnancy is a public health concern both in developed and developing world. In Bangladesh, most of the first pregnancies occur immediately after marriage, especially among teenagers. Although women aged 15-29 years are the most fertility contributing women in Bangladesh, studies are not yet conducted on teenage pregnancy within this group of women. In the current study, an attempt had been made to identify the factors affecting teenage marital pregnancy in women aged 15-29 years.

A cross sectional survey was carried out in 389 women, selected with a convenience sampling technique. Participants were selected on the basis of two criteria, such as married women and age within 15-29 years. We excluded women aged more than 29 years as we attempted to conduct study within high fertility contributing women and with the assumption that they may provide data subjected to relatively high level of recall bias as marital pregnancy may be a longer past event to them. In the analysis, we applied bi-variate and multi-variate logistic regression technique to find out odds ratio of teenage marital pregnancy.

Result revealed that 72.5% of the participants experienced first marital pregnancy during their teenage, with a mean age of 17.88 years (SD = 2.813). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that participants aged 20-24 years had higher likelihood (OR 1.971, 95% CI 1.132 to 3.434), whereas participants aged 25-29 years had lower likelihood (OR 0.054, 95% CI 0.016 to 0.190) of experiencing teenage marital pregnancy compared to participants aged 15-19 years. In addition, participants desired for >2 children had significant higher odds (OR 3.573, 95% CI 1.910 to 6.684) and participants born in urban area had significant lower odds (OR 0.458, 95% CI 0.228 to 0.919) for teenage marital pregnancy.

Based on the findings, we conclude that in order to reduce teenage marital pregnancy, consideration should be given on women's desired number of children and birth place so that women's desired number of children is limited to within two children, and that rural women get increased working and other related opportunities that may contribute in delaying teenage pregnancy.