family chang in iran: transition from traditional marriage to modern one

the main purpose of the paper is to show how iranian family, particularly tehranian family, has changed over times. it is an important social issue because family institution has dominated a country such as iran. hence, if this institution has been changed, it means that the society will be in the process of major social and cultural events. based on our understanding, in general, the family institution, and in the contemporary period, the iranian society has faced with principal changes. among many changes such as the source of income, the relationship between the institution and others, and other family matters, one of these changes is realized in the marriage model and pattern. the principal purpose of the present article is introducing the modality of change in marriage pattern and model, from traditional to modern, marriage on the basis of love and tradition or a combination of both of them. considering the review of related literature, the surveys which have done, two main theoretical perspectives such as marxism and modernization have been used to understand the way from which the family has changed. the results show that most researchers have presented vague and misleading aspects. hence, we have focused on the new perspective called “cultural and social modernity” discussed by anthony giddens (1997) and taghi azadarmaki (2007) during last two decades. hence, the research has relied theoretically on the ideas, and has driven by this perspective. in consideration of the importance of love and marriage and their effects on the society, we are willing to analyze such a matter and its changes among modernists and traditionalists, the research focused on the city of tehran. because of focusing this dichotomy, we should focus on a complicated society, city in iran. hence, we think that tehran is the main and modern city in iran. this is stratified in two classes or three main social strata such as lower, middle, and upper based on income, education, and prestige. we have emphasized on two social classes such as lower and upper ones. especially in two zones of shush (the low social class of the city) and farmanieh (the high social class of the city) in tehran. in understanding this phenomenon, we have respected theory of cultural modernization and have filled 260 questionnaires and 24 deep interviews. results arising from the analysis indicate that the matter of love in farmanieh is flowing, and they agree with the influence of relationship groups, freely choice, and sexual liberation before marriage. in this regard, there is no difference between the men and women with respect to the right of choice in marriage, whereas the people who live in shush, believes in the influence of relationship group and freely choice, but they believe in romantic love, and do not tend in sexual liberation before marriage. further, they believe that there are still natural differences among men and women with respect to the options and decision making. in general, in both of the zones mentioned above, there is no tendency in traditional marriage.