Investigatingng the Relationship between Tendency toward Secular Values and Attitude toward Child among Couples Aged 15-49 Years in Tehran

Iran has witnessed substantial fall in birth rate during the recent three decades. This has also attracted an increasing number of researchers to investigate the patterns and determinants related to Iran's fertility swings. The present study uses the Ingelhart’s value theory and the second demographic transition theory initiated by van de Kaa and Lesthaeghe. The results of this study are based on a survey conducted in Tehran. The survey includes 400 couples aged 15-49 years old. According to the results of this study, around 88 per cent of the sample holds a high level of secular orientation. Furthermore, these results indicate that while religion is highly accepted in the private domain, it is declining in the public domain. According to the results of this study, a larger proportion of the couples believe that the disadvantages of having a child (such as costs, limitations and struggles imposed on parents) exceed its advantages including reproduction and generation continuation. In sum, the results of this study confirm this concluding point that there is a significantly revers association between secularism and child value: the higher the former, the lower the latter.