This year, the day focuses on youth-related fields. The Ministry of Sport and Youth has assigned each day of the week with a special theme as follows:

Monday, July 12: Timely and conscious marriage, promoting simple life, dealing with emerging customs and useless rituals

Tuesday, July 13: The role of premarital counseling in a lasting marriage

Wednesday, July 14: Promoting and facilitating marriage with the participation of charities

Thursday, July 15: Youth empowerment, strengthening family management skills in young couples, healthy and vibrant society

Friday, July 16: Marriage, promoting childbearing, strengthening parenting skills, a dynamic and growing young community

Saturday, July 17: Promoting the Iranian Islamic lifestyle and family excellence

Sunday, July 18: Media literacy, educating young people by social media content

Holding a number of campaigns aimed at creating a culture of easy marriage is also one of the important actions of the sports and youth ministry this year, Azam Karimi, Director of youth social planning and development said.

Currently, 430 specialized counseling centers across the country provide free counseling to young couples during the national marriage week, she stated, IRIB reported.

During the one-week event, several online meetings with the presence of related experts will be held, she noted, adding, 800 media products on the subject of conscious marriage and the reduction of social harms and the role of marriage counseling, will be published.

According to Karimi, 3,700 centers are currently working in the field of social harms, including behavioral harms, street violence, malnutrition, children of divorce, the fight against addiction, street and labor children.

Mohammad Mehdi Tondgooyan, deputy minister of sports and youth, has said that the marriage rate downward trend after 17 years, despite the prevalence of the coronavirus and its economic consequences, has risen and Iran experienced a five percent growth in marriage.

The marriage rate in Iran has increased by 5 percent over the past [Iranian calendar] year (March 2020-March 2021).

Demographic issue

The fertility rate in Iran has been declining over the past eight years, the lowest of which was related to the past [Iranian calendar] year (March 2019- March 2020) with a birth rate of 1.2, according to the data published by the Statistics Center.

The number of births in the whole country faced a downtrend over the past three years, as registered births decreased to 1,196,135 over the past [Iranian calendar] year; a difference of roughly over 120,000 to 16,000 per year.

Population decline comes up with consequences, including the reduction of the working population (aged 15 to 64) and the aging population in the coming decades.

Some 14 policies to support childbearing and the family were announced by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in [the Iranian calendar year] 1393 (March 2014-March 2015) when he stressed that social, cultural, and economic development should be done in accordance with these general policies to support families.

The policies address the need to increase the population and the various dimensions of it, including childbearing, facilitating marriage and strengthening the family, reproductive health, promoting the Iranian-Islamic lifestyle, empowering young people, honoring the elderly, and the environment, which can lead to an increase in the quantity and quality of the population if it is timely and continuous implemented.

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Despite the pandemic that was expected to lead the marriage rate to a downward trend, the reduction of marriage costs has caused the rate to grow by 5 percent last year, while, divorces have decreased by 4 percent, she explained, ISNA reported on Friday.

Marriage threefold of divorce 

Based on the latest statistics, some 307,349 marriages and 99,679 divorces were registered in the country during the first seven months of the past [Iranian calendar] year.

In December 2020, Seifollah Aboutorabi, the National Organization for Civil Registration spokesman said that during the first 9 months of the past [Iranian calendar] year, some 853,084 births were registered across the country, as well as 397,501 deaths during the same period.

Population growth policies

Official statistics of the country and the forecast of demographic experts indicate that if the trend of decreasing fertility rate, increasing single-child families, and decreasing marriage rate continues for the next 30 years, old age will prevail in the country and one in three people will be over 60-years-old, which will be the beginning of a crisis.

Some 14 policies to support childbearing and the family were announced by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in [the Iranian calendar year] 1393 (March 2014-March 2015) when he stressed that social, cultural, and economic development should be done in accordance with these general policies to support families.

The policies address the need to increase the population and the various dimensions of it, including childbearing, facilitating marriage and strengthening the family, reproductive health, promoting the Iranian-Islamic lifestyle, empowering young people, honoring the elderly, and the environment, which can lead to an increase in the quantity and quality of the population if it is timely and continuous implemented.

Kimia Mohammadzadeh, a member of the working group for women and family at the independent association of the University of Tehran, told Mehr news agency that thus, instead of considering family support and youth marriage, policymakers adopt policies that lead to delays in marriage and family formation.

Childbearing, which should be a public issue, became an inefficient policy due to lack of follow-up, she said.

Most recently, the Majlis (Iranian parliament) has developed a support plan to encourage families to increase childbearing.

The plan stipulates health insurance for infertile couples, providing services and facilities to working women, providing health and nutrition support packages to mothers and children, educational opportunities for student mothers, providing livelihood support to families, and ongoing medical services to pregnant women.

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