Many young Iranians do not feel compelled to tie the knot for religious or cultural reasons © SASAN/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images

Bita Ghaffari in Tehran 

Financial Times

At age 27, Neda, a personal trainer living in Tehran, is wondering whether she should bother to get married. Like many younger, urban Iranians, she reckons the loss of her liberty would be too high a price to pay.

“People in my social circle keep telling me it’s not worth giving up my freedom to get married, and they encourage me to continue living happily single,” said Neda, who has an eclectic range of tattoos and regularly appears in public without the mandatory headscarf.

Marriage appears to be an institution in decline in Iran, and the average age at which people wed is on the rise. Similar trends are evident in other countries, but here it has triggered concern among the Islamic republic’s leaders about declining religious observance, the loss of tradition and ultimately the threat of a falling population.

The supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in his first meeting with new cabinet members late last month, personally called on the health minister to follow policies that would encourage procreation and population growth.

The government offers low-interest loans to newly-weds to promote marriage and childbearing, and has increased the amounts on offer in recent years, while both the Iranian army and the Revolutionary Guards offer financial support to infertile couples seeking treatment. 

Over the past decade, the annual number of marriages in Iran has fallen from nearly 800,000 to 480,000, according to the Organization for Civil Registration of Iran.

Much of the decline reflects the country’s changing demographics. “The number of unmarried women under 50 has dropped to around 5mn from 8mn a decade ago,” Shahla Kazemipour, a professor of demography at Tehran University, told the Financial Times. “A steady proportion of unmarried women, about 10 per cent, tie the knot each year.”

But at the same time, the average age of marriage in Tehran has gone up from 25 to 27 for women and from 29 to 30 for men. Many young Iranians do not feel compelled to tie the knot for religious or cultural reasons as they might have done in the past.

Kazemipour said 5 per cent of Iranian women over 40 were now considered unlikely to ever marry, up from only 2 per cent in the 1980s. After the 1979 revolution, more women went to college and their qualifications limited their marriage options “as they would no longer marry men with lower degrees or careers”, she explained.

The raising of a family, said Taghi Azad Armaki, a professor of sociology at Tehran University, was “no longer as valuable and popular as it used to be” and is “not even a second and third priority for many people”. There was a sense of “radical, self-centred individualism” among young men and women who “prioritise their own self-fulfilment”, he told the FT.

Social media, said Kianoush Khashayar, a 27-year-old veterinarian, also glamorises the single life “by showing how unmarried people lead carefree and successful lives . . . People keep comparing their partners to mostly fake idols on social platforms.”

With Iran’s economy in a dire state — owing to high inflation, a weak currency and international sanctions — the expense of starting a family, including the extravagance associated with a typical Persian wedding, can serve as a further deterrent.

“How are you expected to rent a decent house, buy an average car, put food on the table and provide for family and childcare with an income that is barely enough for a single person?” said Khashayar. “Throw in the costs of a lavish celebration and a big dowry, and you freak out even more.” Even households where both spouses work can struggle to make ends meet.

Dowries are expected to be paid on marriage in the form of gold coins or property. Khashayar accused women of exploiting the expectation of “colossal” payments.

However, marriage comes with significant limitations on women’s rights: married women are not allowed to travel abroad without permission from their husbands, while their right to a divorce is restricted unless a prenuptial agreement has been made, and custody of any children is handed to the father.

The Iranian government introduced contraception programmes in the 1990s to control runaway population growth after a baby boom. But it is now concerned about the challenges of an ageing society and a predicted shrinkage of the population, which now stands at nearly 90mn.

While formal marriage is declining in popularity, some couples are opting for cohabitation or what Iranians call “white marriage”. Unlike the temporary marriages long accepted by the Shia faith and entered into by some religious Iranian couples, “white marriage” involves couples simply living together despite it being forbidden by both religion and law.

“White marriage rates range from 7 to 14 per cent [of all couples] in cities like Tehran, Arak, Isfahan and Mashhad,” Azad Armaki said, citing the findings of his own surveys.

For Nazanin, a 37-year-old financially independent entrepreneur, cohabitation makes it easier to learn whether one’s partner is faithful. “You’ll get an idea of what might happen after marriage including abusive behaviour, lying or infidelity,” she said.

Religious authorities often blame the “westoxification” of the society for such lifestyle changes, which they deem incompatible with Islam.

Gholam-Nabi Tavakkoli, a conservative cleric, recently warned that western-style sexual freedoms were undermining the institution of the family. “The spread of white marriage in some Muslim countries is a western conspiracy and has no place in Islam,” he said.

Mohammad Reza Naqdi, a top-ranking Revolutionary Guards officer, said in June that “the enemy” was planning to “prevent Iran’s population growth because of the risks it posed to superpowers”.

Farzaneh Kaseb Ahadi, a teacher of Islamic studies, blamed an improper religious upbringing and a dominant western worldview for changing attitudes to marriage.

“When western states propagated their own cultural norms through social media and satellite television, it appealed to young people with shallow religious beliefs,” she told the FT. “People would lose their interest in marriage in a society wherein [sexual] desires can be easily fulfilled from a young age.” 

Iran’s fertility rate dropped from 2.09 per woman in 2017 — more or less the replacement rate required for a stable population — to 1.65 in 2021, suggesting that the population will peak in two decades and then begin to decline.

But many young Iranians are motivated more by social changes than by government policies, and their attitudes could stymie official efforts to promote marriage and child-bearing.

Divorce, for example, is common in Iran — two out of five marriages end in divorce. Neda, the personal trainer, said people hesitated to marry because “everyone knows so many divorced couples”.

“To me, the main question is why get married?” said Hamid, a 37-year-old architect. He believes the only reason would be to have children, and then only if they could be properly raised and make the world a better place.

“But why should I bring a child into this ugly world when I am living in a country where the economy and a lot more is in bad shape?”