The Problem of Balancing between Family Life and self - realization among Iranian Married Women

As confirmed by many studies, balancing between advancing the necessities of marriage and the concern of self-realization among couples is an important challenge for families in the current world. This research seeks some proper answers to the question of how Iranian middle-class women make a connection between the reality of their life and their dreams in the marital relationship and what strategies they follow to fill the gap. Some western contemporary research take the challenge between necessities of marital life and self-realization into consideration. Adopting concepts such as gender-based division of labor, women’s work at home, and child rearing, this research analyzes these challenges in the context of Iranian contemporary society. This paper employs ethnographic approach. to qualitative research. We conducted 12 in-depth interviews with married woman inhabiting in Tehran to gather data. The findings indicate that the challenge is a serious one in Iranian context. Many of interviewees believed that marital necessities are in contrast with their main demands. It seems that the prevalence of cooperative division of labor can be considered as a possible response to this challenge.