EARLY MARRIAGE OF GIRLS AND IT'S RELATION WITH SOME INDICATORS OF RURAL WOMAN'S REPRODUCTIVE HEAL TH Ie IN ARAB MOTEER VILLAGE - ASSUIT1

The study aims to identify the- impacts of early marriage on
some indicators of rural women's reproductive health and also the
most important health complications of early marriage. • Arab Moteer
village "_ .• EI-Fatth district a - • Assuit Governorate" was selected as
the geographical field of the study. A purposive sample has been
selected with a size of 215 rural women representing 6.5% of the total
village famifies, on two conditions, that the woman has been married
at age less than or equal to 16 and the current age less than or equal
to 30 years old.
A questionnaire was designed and collected using the personal
interview (after it was pre-tested) during October, November and
December 2001, then the data were tabulated and analyzed by using
model "Moharam - Barakat· of X² test.
The results showed that nine variables affecting the
reproductive health indicators concerning the study and explained
about 32.6% of the total variance of reproductive health indicators as
a dependent variable. The variables have been arranged according to
Chi Square Coefficient (X2) and were. the following: husband age at
marriage, monthlY family income, Livestock ho!ding size, wife current
age, house density, husband occupation, wife age at marriage,
number of family members and finally the socio-econornlc status of
wife's current family.
In addition to that, the results of the sample indicated that the
most important health complications of early marriage showed that
63.3% of the women complained from "general weakness of the
body". Followed by 25.6% of the total sample complained from' pain
in bones". Then 5.1% complained from "delivery of handicapped
babies",