demographic and parental family determinants of prostitution among iranian female sex workers: a case-control study

Background: one of the oldest social and health challenges to health is the global sex trading, which mainly involves young individuals. the issue has been dramatically worsening worldwide due to socio-economic and cultural changes. this study was conducted to determine the factors associated with prostitution among young iranian sex workers.methods: this is a case-control study on 400 women including 200 prostitute women as the case group and 200 women randomly selected from the population as the control group. women in the control group were frequency matched with the age and family physician of the women in the case group.results: unlike forced marriage, the case group had lower odds of pre-marriage relationship with the spouse along with parent’s consent when compared to forced marriage (or remarriage relationship with family consent vs. forced marriage=0.05, 95% ci: 0.011, 0.25, p<0.001). prostitution in individuals who reported friendship with a friend with high risk behaviors during late childhood or adolescence was higher than those without such friendship (or friend with risky behavior vs. without risky behavior friend=13.45, 95% ci: 4.07, 53.4, p<0.001). also, cases had a lower odd of being under a tied parental control during childhood and adolescence (or tied vs. no parental control control=0.16, 95% ci: 0.04, 0.6, p=0.008). finally, having single parent family was more common among the case group (or single parent vs. nuclear family=6.33, 95% ci: 2.02, 21.78, p=0.002).conclusion: the current study revealed the importance of parent’s involvement in the children’s and adolescent’s social and behavioral development and successful marriage in tendency toward prostitution. the other important factors that seem to considerably affect the tendency of the participants toward prostitution were having a girlfriend with risky behavior (having sexual relationship at younger age or stealing) and easy and uncontrolled access to private media during adolescence. also, parents of prostitute women had a lower socio-economic status who had no or weak parental supervision during the participant’s adolescence. again, these factors are directly or indirectly affected by parental family functioning, highlighting the importance of parents’ involvement in the development of their children. most important factors reported in this study are modifiable, and designing effective parental training programs regarding supervising and supporting children is highly recommended.