IRAN (→Kurds, →Basseri)
Index → Middle East → Iran
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Also: Arabs, Basseri, Bedouin (Arabia,
Rural
Iranians betroth children “very young”, while marriage is delayed till 14
(girls) and eighteen (boys) (Arasteh and Arasteh, 1964:p156)[1] or 12
and 15[2]. The
minimum lawful age of marriage in 1957 was fifteen (girls) and eighteen
(boys), although courts sometimes permitted marriage at ages thirteen (g) and
fifteen (b) (Levy, 1957)[3]. “After months of deliberation,
Iranian authorities recently approved a law that requires court approval for
the marriage of girls below the age of 13 and boys younger than
Early marriage for
both men and women was a common practice in
Rhymes include oral, anal and genital themes (Friedl, 1997:p235)[19]. Among the Jews, “[m]asturbation is strongly opposed on religious grounds but it is said to be common. Informants claim that when the boy is old enough to ejaculate, he is taken to a [M]uslim prostitute; in the past he would be married off to avoid the problem” (Loeb, 1977:p72)[20]. After toddlerhood, children are explicitly discouraged from playing together by the warning that they might transform into the opposite sex. Drew (1997)[21] stated that “[l]ittle girls of all ages are kept well covered. In many provincial towns, girl babies are hidden completely under their mother’s chador on the street. Toddler girls wear chadors often with only a pacifier protruding from its folds. […] Little boys are often bare from the waist down, obviating the need for diapers outside. At any age, males may urinate openly in the street or at the roadside”. [The Iranian chador of 1970-1 was worn in public “starting before the age of puberty”[22]]. Prior to puberty, male children gain a much more extensive knowledge of female anatomy at all stages of the life cycle, and all stages of pregnancy and lactation, by virtue of the fact that their mothers take them to the public baths with them on “women’s day. […] It is up to the bath attendants to decide, based on their own observations, whether a young boy is too old to be present on women’s day. Clearly men retain in adulthood images of what they saw in the bathhouse during childhood”. On sexual behaviour:
“Children do not play unsupervised. An invitation to a child to play at the house of a neighbor or a schoolmate always includes the mother. Such invitations are in any case rare, as are all social interactions with nonkin. Children, in general, play with their cousins under the watchful eye of all mothers. Female children are watched very carefully. Access to information on sex-rehearsal play would be severely hampered by cultural taboos on admitting anything detrimental about one’s children, especially to nonkin”.
The attitude toward sexually abusive experiences seems remarkable:
“Since marriages can be contracted at
any point after a girl has reached the age of 9, it is legally feasible for a
very little girl to be married to a man of any age, and thus be physically at
his mercy. This no doubt constitutes the broadest category of potential
sexual abuse of children. One of the strongest arguments made in
According to Hojat
et al. (1999)[24],
Iranians in the
Janssen,
D. F., Growing Up Sexually. Last revised: Nov 2005 |
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[1] Arasteh, A. R. &
Arasteh, J. (1964) Man and Society in
[2] Mehryar, A. H. & Tashakkori, G. A. (1978) Sex and Parental Education as Determinants of Marital Aspirations and Attitudes of a Group of Iranian Youth, J Marriage & Fam 40, 3:629-37, at p630
[3] Levy, R. (1957) The Social Structure of Islam.
[4] Charles Recknagel/Azam Gorgin
(2002) Human-Rights Activists Win Partial Victory In Battle Against Child
Marriage, RFE (
[5] Moezi,
A. (1967) Marital characteristics in
[6] Rice, C. C. (1923) Persian Women
and their Ways.
[7] Piggot, J. (1874)
[8] Wills, C. J. (1886)
[9] Friedl, E. (1978
[1985]) Parents and children in a village in
[10] Friedl, E. (1981)
Women and the Division of Labor in an
[11] Kazerooni, T, Talei, A. R., Sadeghi Hassanabadi, A., Arasteh, M. M. Saalabian, J. (2000) Reproductive behaviour in women in Shiraz, Islamic Republic of Iran, East Mediterr Health J 6,2-3:517-21
[12] Haeri, Sh. (1989) Law of Desire.
[13] Rice, C. C. (1923) Persian Women
and their Ways.
[14] Piggot, J. (1874)
[15] Kian, A. (1995)
Gendered Occupation and Women's Status in Post-Revolutionary
[16] Cf. Kian, A. (1997) Women and Politics in Post-Islamist Iran: The Gender Conscious Drive to Change, Br J Middle Eastern Studies 24,1:75-96, at p77
[17] Goodwin, J. (1994) Price of Honor.
[18] Ladier-Fouladi, M. (1997) The Fertility Transition in
[19] Friedl, E. (1997) Children of Deh Koh.
[20] Loeb, L. D. (1977) Outcaste.
[21] Drew, P. E. (1997)
[22] Gulick, J.
(1976/1983) The
[23] Guljick, J. &
Guljick, M. E. (1978 [1979]) The domestic social environment of women and girls
in Insfahan, Iran, in Beck, L. & Keddie, N. (Eds.) Women in the Muslim World.
[24] Hojat, M., Shapurian, R., Nayerahmadi, H., Farzaneh, M., Foroughi, D., Parsi, M. & Azizi, M. (1999) Premarital sexual, child rearing, and family attitudes of Iranian men and women in the United States and in Iran, J Psychol 133,1:19-31