Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran.

2 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Sciences and Culture, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This article has two main parts. The first section introduces the model of "Marital Paradigms" (Willoughby et al., 2015). In this conceptualization, all the beliefs of a person (woman or man) about marriage and marital life can be categorized in two distinct areas: "Beliefs about Getting Married" and "Beliefs about Being Married". "Beliefs about Getting Married" represent one's beliefs about "marriage" and its importance in life, as well as a general view of how it is done. These beliefs consist of three distinct dimensions: "Marital Timing" (one's view of the ideal and expected timing for marriage, the expected length of love), "Marital Salience" (individual beliefs about the relative importance and global importance of marriage and getting married), "Marital Context" (beliefs and attitudes about the context in which marriage should occur). "Beliefs about Being Married" represent one's beliefs about the nature and methods of managing marital life. These beliefs also have three distinct dimensions: "Marital Processes" (beliefs about how the marriage process should take place, including beliefs about gender roles (Marital Roles), beliefs about attempting to make marital life (Marital Efforts), and other marriage-related processes), "Marital Centrality" (it is based on beliefs about the importance of marital/spouse's role in relation to other roles played by an adult married person), and "Marital Permanence" (beliefs about the commitment to marry and the admissibility of divorce). In the second section, the study of "Marital Paradigms" among Iranian youths (male and female) and gender-related comparisons of six dimensions are discussed. The research sample consisted of 644 students (323 females and 321 males) who entered the study using stratified sampling (stratums: gender, universities, academic grades). To measure Marital Paradigms, "Marital Paradigms Scale" (MPS) (Willoughby and Hall, 2015) was used. The results of the study showed that men and women have different patterns of Marital Paradigms. Meanwhile

Keywords

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