The Importance of Marriage and its Determinants; Emphasizing the Role of Sexual Attitude and Experience Before Marriage among Famale College Students in Tehran

The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of marriage and its determinants with the focus on sexual attitudes and experiences among females.   For this purpose, a survey was conducted among 1055 female college students of government and private universities in Tehran in 2018-2019. The data was collected using an online questionnaire and multistage cluster sampling method.  The mean age of the girls was 21.2 years (SD=3.32) and 76% had a marital intention, while significant percentage (60%) were uncertain about their marrying within next 5 years and 62% preferred continuing university education rather than getting married. Marriage was important for only about 51% of girls.  Some liberal sexual attitude was observed among female college students. Despite that premarital sexual experience was significantly associated with the lower importance of marriage in bivariate analysis, multiple regression models showed that the most important determinants of marital importance among girls is religiosity, conservative sexual attitude regarding the importance of virginity, and lower optimistic views towards marital opportunity. According to the findings of this study, apart from providing economic condition for marriage and family formation among youth, social policies on marriage need to make education and marriage more compatible for girls and consider attitudinal changes among new generation.