Knowledge and Attitudes of the Family towards Endogamy and The Premarital Medical Examination

Document Type : Original Article

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Abstract

Marriage is the basis for building the family and the family is the core of society.
The current study aims to measure the family’s level of knowledge and attitudes towards the pre-marital medical examination, and their perception on endogamy, to study the differences in knowledge and attitudes between fathers and mothers towards pre-marital medical examination, to study the correlation between parent’s demographic characters (age, education , work status, the duration of marriage and the number of children) and their attitudes towards pre-marital medical examination, to study the relationship between demographic variables of girls (age, education and work status) and their attitudes towards pre-marital medical examination.
The study is a descriptive method; its tool is a questionnaire includes open and closed questions. The study sample included an intentional sample of 150 parents (70 fathers and 80 mother), and 50 girls selected randomly from Alexandria Governorate. The SPSS program was used for percentage, frequencies, Pearson correlation and T test for differences. 
Results showed that 58.7% of parents see the medical examination as routine procedures to to get the marriage contract. 82.0% of parents believe it should be optional. 92.0.0% of parents extract this certificate a few days before marriage, the majority of parents (86.0%) are complaining of the charge of medical examination cost. 37.3% of parents prefers endogamy, among them 30.4% to maintain the customs, traditions and financial assets, 89.3% have a precedent experience in successful marriage within the family. 44.0% of the girls promote endogamy, and that 86.4% of them see that costs will be less expensive, and that 90.9% have successful models of marriage. Parent’s decision to complete the marriage procedures despite the existence of some diseases are 5.0%, 6.0%, 5.0% and 80.0 % resp., for whom suffered from genetic diseases, infectious diseases, blood diseases and diseases can be cured resp.,
From the results; it was found that 2.0% and 31.0% of the parents had low level of knowledge and attitudes towards the premarital medical examination; while the level of parents’ Knowledge and attitudes was moderate (14.7% and 59.3%) respectively. The high level of knowledge and attitudes of parents toward premarital medical examination represent 83.3% and 20.0% resp. Results showed that no significant differences between the father’s and mother’s knowledge and attitudes towards the premarital medical examination, a significant correlation between the participants’ education and the knowledge on the premarital medical examination. No significant correlations between parent’s work and knowledge on premarital medical examination. A negative correlation was found between parent’s age and the knowledge, A negative correlation was found between parent’s attitude towards premarital medical examination and both of the duration of the marriage and the number of children.
The study recommend to disseminate the knowledge on the existence of transmitted infectious, genetic and blood diseases through the educational programs of sciences and home economics in middle, secondary schools and higher education. To care about the performance of the medical examination and that must be free of charge and be included under the umbrella of medical insurance.

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