The Effect of Cultural Modernization on Marriage Process and Family Formation of University Students in Golestan Province

One of the important contexts of marriage and family change is the expansion of modernization and its various components in society. The purpose of this article is to examine the process of marriage and family formation in the context of cultural modernization. The research is a survey and the study tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. The statistical population of the study consisted of all students of universities in Golestan province and the sample was selected by stratified random sampling. The sample size includes 400 single and married male and female students. The results of multivariate analysis showed that the components of risk taking, gender equality, and media consumption, have positive (additive) effect and fatalism and religious beliefs have negative (decreasing) effects on marriage changes. From among these factors, risk taking has had greater influence compared to other components. Also, the goodness-of-fit indices derived from structural equation modeling indicate that cultural modernization has an impact on changing the components of the marriage process. As such, a significant proportion of changes in marriage and family formation, especially among young people, are affected by the cultural changes associated with modernization.