News / Iran Today

Marriage & family in Iran

Thursday, 29 September 2016 10:27 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 29 September 2016 10:29 AM ]

An Iranian couple sit overlooking the city of Tehran in this October 19, 2006 file photo. (By Reuters)

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei just recently defined a number of policies aimed at boosting families’ status and easing marriage for the youth.

Family is of paramount importance in Islam and Islamic states. There are numerous Islamic teachings regarding the rearing of children and the appropriate behavior toward wives. These teachings aim to create a society devoid of psychological complexes of any kind, complexes that would lead to crimes.

The first article of the overall family policies states that the establishment’s measures should aim to create a family-based society and to strengthen the family and its main functions on the basis of Islamic patterns as a focal point for raising children on the basis of Islamic teachings.

Islam regards the roots of all forms of delinquency in inappropriate family education. Some of the grave consequences of such a perspective are increased extramarital affairs, the birth of illegitimate children, and abortions.

The Iranian culture considers women to be mainly responsible for the raising of the kids. This has made some well-educated and highly-skilled women remain at home without a job. The government plans to provide those women with insurance and to pay most of the premium. The plan seems to have gotten stuck in red tape though.

Of course one cannot deny the father’s role. Fathers’ power is what the children lean on and what encourages order and discipline among the kids. It is this very discipline that prevents the children from wrong-doing.

The coming to age of the people born in the 1980s at times of economic woes affected by stagflation made it somehow impossible for the people to marry at an early age. Nowadays, the average age of marriage is 27 among men and 25 among women. On the other hand, the fertility rate has reached 1.8 percent. Iranian statesmen are encouraging the youth to marry young. They plan to reduce the marriage age by at least two years so that the population would grow by 2.1 percent. In order to prevent the problems that may lead to divorce, the government holds consultation sessions for young couples. There, they learn about behavior within the family as well as sex.

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