Medico-social characteristics of young people at the stage of creating a family
Kamsiuk, L.G.; Sheveleva, A.A.
Sovetskoe Zdravookhranenie 1: 13-16
1991
ISSN/ISBN: 0038-5239 PMID: 2028281 Document Number: 327279
In an attempt to improve the health of young families, the demographic characteristics of a cohort of individuals aged 18 to 24 years old, who were married in 1986, and who lived in the city of Ivanovo, Ukraine for at least 3 years was studied. For both partners, the marriage was the first one. The cohort consisted of a total of 2853 couples. The average age of bridegrooms and brides was 22.1 and 21.6, respectively; 27.7% of the wives and 19.4 of the husbands had a college education. A majority of the couples had very low incomes; 73% of the husbands and 83% of the wives expected to receive financial help from their parents, and half of all couples planned to live in their parents' apartments. Only half of the couples knew each other for 1 year. Reasons for getting married included love (86.5% of bridegrooms and 84.8% of brides), friendship (8.3% and 13.3%, respectively), and pregnancy (1% and 0.5%, respectively). Premarital sexual relations were recorded in 77.7% of bridegrooms and in 65.2% of brides; 27.2% and 39.1%, respectively, became sexually active when they were 18 years old. Only 210.5% of the women who had premarital sexual relations regularly used contraceptives and, as a result, 9.8% had a history of pregnancy and 2.5% had a history of induced abortion. Only 31.7% of bridegrooms and 34.6% of brides had regular physical check-up; 20.5% of bridegrooms and 33.5% of brides had a history of chronic disease.