Iran’s Islamic legal code outlaws premarital sex, sex outside of marriage and abortion (sound familiar? we’re not even going to bring up gay sex here), but the law is no match for a young person’s quest to get it on.
A recent survey reports the number of sexually active unwed Iranians is on the rise “… more than one in four men aged 19 to 29 had experienced sex before marriage”
The survey also revealed that the average marrying age had risen to 40 for men and 35 for women, a blow to the government's goal of promoting marriage to shore up society's Islamic foundations.
So why the increase in sexual activity and the feet-dragging to married life?
Many blame economic circumstances for their failure to marry, citing high inflation, unemployment and a housing shortage along with cultural traditions that expect brides' families to provide dowries and husbands to commit themselves to mehrieh, an agreed cash gift.
How do you say, “make love not war” in Persian?
Hojatoleslam Ghasem Ebrahimipour, a sociologist, told Shabestan news agency that the trend was due to the availability of premarital sex, and feminism among educated women. "When a woman is educated and has an income, she does not want to accept masculine domination through marriage," he said.
The Guardian has the full story.
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