The institution of marriage has historically functioned as the foundation of both the Iranian family and society. This study examines the significant changes that have occurred during the rule of the Islamic Republic that have delayed marriage formation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Iran between 2017 and 2020 and in-depth interviews with more than one hundred university-educated young Iranians, this dissertation explores new patterns of youth intimacy, the evolution of young people’s perspectives on premarital relationships, and explores the reasons behind the widespread delay in marriage.
Since the Revolution of 1979 that led to the fall of the Shah’s modernizing regime, Iranian society has experienced many changes in the realm of marriage and premarital intimacies despite the Islamic Republic’s imposition of conservative religious values designed to reinforce traditional marriage practices. These have included a decline in marriage rates and an increased rate of divorce, as well a rise in the ages of first marriages accompanied by alternative lifestyles that reject marriage as an institution.
While economic difficulties, increases at the level of education, and the existence of discriminatory family laws in Iran have often been cited as reasons for these changes, this dissertation argues that it is a dialectical interaction among sociocultural, psychological, moral, and legal factors that better explains this change.
Interviews revealed that conflicting attitudes of idealism, cynicism, and moral ambivalence play a significant role in marriage postponement. This was most apparent in the young peoples’ dissatisfaction with khāstegāri, a traditional method of marital partner-evaluation by a young person’s family, which was rejected because it conflicted with a more personal and intimate model of partner selection. That model, however, suffered from excessive idealism that set the standards for a suitable partner so high they could not be easily met. Classical Persian poetry, with its ideals of unconsummated love, reinforced such romantic idealism. In response, a growing number of educated middle-class young Iranians chose to enter into intimate relationships outside of marriage facilitated by the emergence of new social spaces that allowed these new intimacies to flourish in spite of government attempts to discourage them. The research concluded that as a result of marriage postponement and the rise of premarital and non-marriage practices and lifestyles such as dating and cohabitation, intimacy has been transformed in contemporary Iran and as a result, significant changes are recognizable in gender relations and family structure. Young women and men demand a more egalitarian relationship, mutual emotional support and intellectual compatibility, a satisfying sex life, and someone with whom they can share their interests. / 2026-03-25T00:00:00Z
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48493 |
| Date | 26 March 2024 |
| Creators | Babadi, Mehrdad |
| Contributors | Smith-Hefner, Nancy J. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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