Objectives: The aim of this study is to investigate the multiple reproductive health care-seeking behaviors among those of adolescents compared to young adult and adult women in Bangladesh.

Methods: The present study was based on the data from the Bangladesh Demographic Health Survey-2011. A country representative sample of 8,753 married women who had given at least one birth been were extracted from married adolescents (10-19 years), young adult (20-34 years) and adult (35-49 years) were analyzed. Any contraceptive method, modern contraceptive method, at least one antenatal care visit by skilled health professionals (SHP), at least four or more antenatal care visit by SHP, institutional delivery, delivery by SHP, and mothers’ postnatal checkup by SHP were used as a proxy indicator of reproductive health care-seeking behavior. Multilevel Poisson regression analysis was used to examine the association between outcomes and exposure variables for three intergenerational age group of women.

Results: This study found that the young adult women (66.6%) had higher practice of using any type of contraceptive methods in compare to adolescents (28.0%). The utilization of modern contraceptive methods for adolescent people is 28.9% whereas for young adults is 66.7% which is comparatively more than double of the adolescents. The rate of at least one time antenatal care visit for adolescent provided by SHP is much lower (26.8%) than young adults (68.8%). However, the rate of at least four or more antenatal care visit for adolescent provided by SHP is much lower (26.6%) than young adults (69.6%). The two outcome variables (place of delivery and delivery by skilled health professionals) have more or less equal level of association with maternal age at birth. Mothers’ postnatal checkup by SHP for adolescent is also much lower (26.0%) than young adults (69.3%) and much higher than adults (4.7%). The results of the multilevel analysis indicate that the adolescents have higher propensity to use any contraceptive methods as well as modern contraceptive methods in compare to their young counterparts. The adolescents are least interested of visiting for at least one/four or more ANC supported by skilled health professionals in compare to the reference category, young adults. The likelihood of using institutional delivery care are much lower for adolescents which is statistically significant (ARR = 0.77, CI = 0.69-0.85). The results explain that adolescents are less likely to use institutional delivery and safe delivery care but adults are more likely to use those services in compare to young adults. There is also a reduced likelihood of mothers’ postnatal checkup by SHP for adolescent mothers with a statistically significant association (ARR = 0.75, CI = 0.67-0.85) than young adult mothers.

Conclusions: Based on the fact that adolescence is a crucial development stage which reflects both childhood health care status and sets the foundation for adult health care status, it is particularly important to protect adolescent women against many reproductive health care-seeking issues that emerged from early marriage and pregnancy. We recommend future longitudinal research to provide clarity regarding these concerns