Electronic Physician (ISSN: 2008-5842) http://www.ephysician.ir February 2018, Volume: 10, Issue: 2, Pages: 6292-6298, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.19082/6292 Corresponding author: Associate Professor Dr. Zahra Behboodi Moghadam, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tohid Square, Eastern-Nosrat Street, Tehran 1419733171, Iran. Tel: +98.9122494201, Fax: +98.2188363715, Email: bahar_behboodi@yahoo.com Received: October 05, 2017, Accepted: January 10, 2018, Published: February 2018 iThenticate screening: January 07, 2018, English editing: January 14, 2018, Quality control: January 15, 2018 This article has been reviewed / commented by four experts © 2018 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Page 6292 Perceptions of teenage women about marriage in adolescence in an Iranian setting: A qualitative study Afrouz Mardi 1,2 , Abbas Ebadi 3 , Zahra Behboodi Moghadam 4 , Shirin Shahbazi 5 1 Ph.D. Candidate in Reproductive Health, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran 2 Lecturer, School of Health, Ardabil University of Medical Sciences, Ardabil, Iran 3 Professor in Nursing, Behavioral Sciences Research Center, Nursing Faculty, Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran 4 Ph.D. in Reproductive Health, Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran 5 Ph.D. in Reproductive Health, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran Type of article: Original Abstract Background and aim: Early marriage threatens the health and human rights of millions of girls all around the world. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of Iranian teenage women about marriage in adolescence. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted based on the conventional content analysis approach on 14 teenage married women (aged13-19 years) who attended all urban-rural healthcare centers (4 centers) in Ardabil, Iran between May 2016 and Jan 2017. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. Purposeful sampling was continued until data saturation. The data were analyzed using the Graneheim and Landman strategies. Results: The mean age at marriage was 13.2 (SD=1.25) years and the duration of marital life ranged from 45 days to 3 years. During the data analysis, three main categories were extracted that each of them consisted of three sub-categories. The main categories, included "a false sense of sexual development", "death of dreams", and "threatened independence". Conclusion: Results of this study revealed that teenage women could not comprehend opportunities in life. These findings could help health care providers and policy makers to provide teenage women with special care and better support to prevent negative consequences of early marriage. Keywords: Marriage, Perception, Adolescence, Women, Qualitative study 1. Introduction Despite the alarming trend of increased marriage age in many societies, early marriage is still a serious issue and a form of violence against girls that has not been dealt with as it should (1). By definition, child marriage is a marriage in which the wife or husband or both are under the age of 18. This bitter fact threatens the health and human rights of millions of girls worldwide, and in developing countries in particular. One-third of girls in the developing countries marry below the age of 18 years. Between 2011 and 2020, 14.2 million children are expected to marry worldwide every year and this figure will be 15.1 million between 2021 and 2030 (25,000 cases every day) (2, 3). These young girls are often called "women" because of their marriage, while they are still children in terms of age and experience (1). According to religious rules which are derived from Islam, boys and girls should marry as soon