Relationship between Alienation and the Tendency to Divorce among Women in the City of Mashhad

The increasing rate of divorce in Iran has turned this phenomenon into a social issue. This study exammines the assoication between tendency to divorce and alienation among a sample of women in the City of Mashhad. The statistical population of the research is all married women of Mashhad and the sample size is 384 people. Cluster sampling method was used to select the samples. The findings of the path analysis show that the impact of alienation on marital intimacy, family involvement, conflict over decision-making power and tendency to divorce is significant. Also, the effect of spouse's unemployment on marital intimacy, conflict over decision-making power and tendency to divorce is significant. The findings suggest that the alienation variable along with the mediating variables explained 53% of the factors of tendency to divorce. Since the feeling of alienation is rooted in individual and social "lack of integration" and "lack of cohesion", policymaking is necessary to increase and improve the methods leading to proper communication action in the public sphere of society.