White marriage is a form of cohabitation of couples without adherence to Sharia or legal contracts which has emerged to adapt to the problems and respond to the requirements of the modern world. It is a form of marital life that is not officially registered.In white marriage, the information about the agreement of the parties is not registered in any official document or legal office. While white marriage is not new in the world, it is reported to be a growing trend in the major cities of Iran.
White marriage is a sociological term and from the standpoint of customs, religion, and laws governing Iran, it is considered criminal and illegal behavior. Nonetheless, despite this and due to the growth of individual awareness and economic problems, it is expanding. the secretive nature of the government and its ideological and political sensitivities prevent reporting on the subject, and no statistics are available on this subject.
Statistics and information related to cohabitation and white marriage in Iran
According to unofficial statistics, white marriage is proliferating in the big cities of Iran, but the secretive nature of this type of cohabitation has made it difficult to reach statistics.Because the relationship between men and women in Iran is defined to form on religious and customary norms, many government officials and the media are trying to conceal the spread of this lifestyle among the people and the youth. Marital relation, except in the form of permanent or temporary marriage, is considered illegal and a crime.Despite Islamic mandates and significant means to support and encourage young people to start a family, verbal planning and therapeutic teaching based on the sanctity of family formation and population growth are ineffective and insufficient in practice. Structural human needs are driving more and more white Iranian marriages.
Transformations of Iranian society
Iranian society has been subject to structural changes in recent decades, due to challenging economic situations, with recession and unemployment on the one hand, and the rise of modernity and altered values on the other. Therefore, the youth have discovered white marriage or cohabitation without legal requirements as a sensible solution to meet their social and personal needs. They are doing this to avoid the significant financial burden, social and legal obligations, and legal and social costs of traditional marriage.
Reasons for welcoming white marriage
White marriage is growing especially among educated and university-educated young people who emigrated to the big cities for work and study.Important issues include changing the lifestyle and outlook of young people towards life and marriage, the right to freedom of choice and the right to the body, the problems and limitations of permanent marriage for women, economic constraints, the lack of suitable employment and aversion from religions, are among the reasons for the emergence, growth, and continuation of white marriage or cohabitation in Iran.
Attitudes of men and women toward this type of marriage
Most Women who entered into this type of relationship tended to find an official marriage.
White Marriage Chart
It means white marriage in Iran is regarded as an approach to facilitate an official marriage and a way for getting to know each other before the official marriage. In the current situation, with a lack of economic support and difficult legal and social conditions, they had to accept the white marriage.This is while men were less inclined towards formal marriage or had no intention of marrying the person they were in cohabitation with.Sexual relations and the loss of virginity are important issues in the customs and religious beliefs that prevent women from marrying any type of person, thus limiting the circle of their choices. The cultural and religious significance of virginity means that cohabitation persists and the percentage of formal marriages decreases for people, especially women.
House with Open Door
Typically, rent or mortgage is an important issue in cohabitation, which is often agreed upon by the parties to be paid jointly.On the other hand, unlike the more traditional neighbourhood culture of the past, the apartment living culture, with its limited neighbourhood relationships and lack of recognition of people in units of a building, creates a form of anonymity that restricts the formal or informal socialization of couples and their form of the relationship remain unrecognizable to the surrounding neighbors.A House with an Open Door: A Comprehensive Research on White Marriage in Iran is a research report that has been published for the first time in Iran. It investigates explicit and implicit aspects of this phenomenon at the macro level of the country with emphasis on the metropolises of Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan on a high volume of up-to-date data from the field. The full text and a brief version of this research report are available on this page.
What are the advantages of white marriage in Iran? Provision for financial needs, freedom from the burden of housing problems, responding to emotional and sexual needs, learning more about each other, being able to easily end the relationship in case of a wrong choice, finding a way for a right choice for permanent marriage, experiencing a form of cohabitation before permanent marriage, are among the reasons for the following for the introduction of a type of marriage.
What are the disadvantages of white marriage in Iran? Lack of psychological safety for couples, hiding relationships from family and society, fear of revealing relationships, the possibility of violence and lack of legal protection due to fear of the consequences of being found guilty and accused of adultery, lack of legal protection, future of girls who leave marriage such as suffering from loss of virginity and its consequences, unwanted pregnancy, reduced sense of responsibility, lack of allowance for the wife, not taking the share and inheritance of the parties from each other in case of death of one side, issues with child custody, and difficulties obtaining birth certificates for potential children are often mentioned as disadvantages for white marriage in Iran.
Is there a punishment for White Marriage in the Iranian system of law? White marriage is illegal in the Islamic Republic of Iran and is regarded as an illegitimate relationship that is punishable as adultery (Article 221 of the Islamic Penal Code). Additionally, the parties will face the severe punishment of being stoned as adulterers if either one or both of them are married to another person and engage in such a relationship.
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