Abstract
Objective: As it known, the problem of child marriage is increasing in last years and primarily affect girls. Worldwide, child marriage is most often occurs in poor, rural communities, as in some regions of Turkey. Unfortunately, the child marriage may have been affected the negative way of functionality which emerging the many problem. For instance, child marriages are twice as likely to be victims of domestic violence with impaired marital harmony than their peers who marry later. A further stronger effect of child marriage that is higher rates of witnessing to domestic violence for thier children. The aim of this study was to investigation of childhood psychological traumas with marital harmony in women who had married as child.
Method: The study population was consisted the two women groups. First group was including the 50 women who had married before the ages of 18, whereas the second (namely, control) group was including the 50 of 87 women who had meets the inclusion criteria of our study and married after the ages of 18. Our participants were admitted to outpatient unit of Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Faculty of Medicine University of Dicle for the examination of routine pregnancy, between the months July 2013 and august 2013, in Turkey.
All participants were examined by a trained psychiatrist (with SCID assessment). After then, the sociodemographic data form which prepared by the study authors based on the sociodemographic features of region, Arizona sexual experience scale (ASES), dyadic adjustment scale (DAS), and childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ) were applied.
Results: Dyadic cohesion (degree to which respondent and partner participate in activities together) and affection expression (degree to respondent agrees with partner regarding emotional affection) subscale scores were found significantly lower in the study group (respectively, p=0.015, p=0.003). Also, marital harmony was mostly affected by the childhood traumas, age of marriage, age of first pregnancy, sexual abuse and violence. We found that the scores of emotional (p=0.04) and physical abuse (p=0.035) subscales in CTQ were significantly higher in study group than the control group. Also, we found that the sexual and physical violence were significantly higher in study group than the control group, particularly during the early years of marriage (respectively, p=0.007, p=0.001). The sexual desire, sexual arousal and ASES total scores were significantly different among the three groups (respectively, p=0.012, p=0.034, p=0.048).
Conclusions: As far as we know that, our study is the first study for evaluating in a combination of the childhood trauma, sexual functionality, and marital harmony in the child marriage. We found here; marital harmony was significantly impaired in child marriage. Particularly, it was determined that the childhood traumas, married in early ages, sexual abuse and violence with become pregnant as a child.
Consequently, we demonstrated that childhood marriage was significantly associated with higher rate of emotional abuse, physical and sexual violence. Also, sexual functions were mostly impaired in women who had married in childhood.

Key words: childhood marriage, marital harmony, childhood traumas, sexual functionality disorder