Missing pieces: A critical review of research on forced marriage and a call for family scientists to study forced marriage

In recent decades, there has been increased attention paid to the phenomenon of forced marriage. However, much of this work positions forced marriage as a problem of “backwards” culture or religion. This scoping review synthesizes and critiques research on forced marriage, showing that extant research has focused on individual circumstances of vulnerability, forced entrance to marriage, and cisgendered heterosexual women. These narrow framings eclipse the structural drivers, forces that prevent exit, and experiences of heterosexual men, queer individuals, and those with disabilities. Overall, the reviewed literature demonstrates the opportunity of applying new methodological (e.g., social autopsy), conceptual (e.g., post‐carceral approaches), and descriptive (e.g., gender and sexual minority people) approaches to this social problem. We urge family scientists to pay more attention to forced marriage, as they are uniquely positioned to parse out distinctions in the range of experiences that constitute forced marriage and to consider strategies to support marital self‐determination.