Sociological Study of Influencing Factors in the Tendency of Divorced Women to Remarry (Case Study of Isfahan City)

The phenomenon of divorce in Iran has been growing despite all social and cultural policies and plans during the last two decades. It has gone beyond the amount predicted in the 5th and 6th development plans and the plans of the policy-making institutions. Controling and reducing this phenomenon have not been very successful. The two events of increasing age of marriage and decreasing age of divorce in Iranian society have caused some sociologists and family activists to talk about the occurrence of the two phenomena of "late marriage" and "early separation". As one of the main points of population concentration in the country, Isfahan Province is considered as one of the most significant areas prone to social and cultural changes. Like other large cities of Iran, it has not been spared from damage in the family and interpersonal relationships. Various researches have shown the high rate of divorce, relationships before marriage, lack of commitment in relationships, and personal and family anomalies in this city (Qolizadeh et al., 2014: 40; Zarandi et al., 2016: 129). The meta-analyses of the researches that have been conducted in this field show the upward trend of reluctance of more than 60% of the divorced women to remarry in the society (Nasseri et al., 2018, 58) (Akbarzadeh and Hashemianfar, 1398: 179). Since there is always a part of changes in the field of marriage related to people, who have already had marriage experience, this article waas done with the aim of studying the sociological factors and sources that were effective in the divorced women’s tendency to remarry in the city of Isfahan.

The current research was a quantitative study in terms of nature and a survey type in terms of methodology. All the divorced women, who had a maximum age of 45 years, a divorce period of less than 10 years, and lived in Areas 15, 8, and 5 of Isfahan City constituted the statistical population of this research. From among the estimated 4265 women, 356 samples were selected by referring to family courts, welfare organizations, Imam Khomeini Relief Committee, as well as beauty salons and sports clubs based on the available sampling methods.

The theoretical analysis of the data showed that the demographic changes of Iranian families were moving in the direction of increasing individualism. Such changes as rationality, individualism, cultural micro-systems in the field of marriage values, and criticism of traditions had taken place in the Iranian families. The iranian women had less emphasis on traditional values and functions of marriage. The results of this research were theoretically more in line with the theories of egalitarian values, Parsonsian social support theory, and Long and Young's theory of changing roles. The data analysis revealed that the divorced women's feeling of lack of support from their families and social structures. In fact, lack of relevant institutions and social structures were the most important variables and factors that played the biggest roles in explaining and predicting the women’s lack of tendency to remarry. Also, there was a social capital erosion and the divorced women had a widespread mistrust and cynicism towards the unmarried men and the society in the same way as the unmarried men had towards the divorced women, which had resulted in the fear of accepting obligations and responsibilities in life. Moreover, there were negative attitudes towards women and uninterested beliefs in the cultural stereotypes of the society. Not having a spouse had the greatest impact on the divorced women’s reluctance to remarry. According to the results of this research, cultural changes and growths of egalitarian ​​and individualistic values ​​of independence and self-reliance based on financial and personal aspects had reduced the women’s tendency to remarry. These factors could be mentioned as the influencing factors in remarriage among the studied women.