A Cohort Perspective on Changes in Family, Fertility Behaviour and Attitudes

Chapters 6 and 7 have shed light on family planning use as the main proximate determinant of fertility. However, given the fact that the onset of fertility decline occurred a few years before the revival of the official family planning program in 1989 and the evidence of use both traditional and modern methods of contraception by a significant minority of women in the years when the official family planning program was dormant, the question arises as to whether other factors such as social change and transformation of attitudes toward family and fertility paved the way for the later success of the family planning program and the phenomenal fertility decline in Iran in recent years. In other words, despite the contribution of the family planning program to an acceleration of the fertility decline during the later 1980s, the program itself can be considered to be a response to the demand for smaller family size observed before the mid-1980s. There is evidence of profound shifts in attitudes toward family-related behaviours in much of the world (Thornton and Freedman 1982; Morgan and Waite 1987) and evidence suggests that changing attitudes toward family life have played a pivotal role in demographic trends (Thornton and Freedman 1982; Thornton 1989; Axinn and Thornton 1993; Thornton and Young-Demarco 2001). This chapter aims to examine women's reproductive behaviour as well as attitudes toward family and fertility in Iran. The focus of the present chapter will be on four selected provinces of Gilan, Sistan & Baluchistan, West Azarbaijan and Yazd covered in the 2002 Iran Fertility Transition Survey. Among the questions to be addressed are: How do women in contemporary Iran perceive marriage and childbearing? How do these attitudes vary across regions and social groups? Have attitudes of women towards marriage, family and childbearing changed across time? If so, how far have these changes contributed to the fertility decline in Iran? More importantly, if attitudes have changed, how and why did they change? Drawing on the IFTS data, it is argued here that the Iranian fertility decline has been due to social change at both the macro (societal) and micro (family/individual) levels.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as the ANU Working Papers in Demography No. 88, and a later version appeared as a book Chapter. See Abbasi-Shavazi et al. (2003), and Abbasi-Shavazi et al. (2008a).