At age 27, Neda, a personal trainer living in Tehran, is wondering whether she should bother to get married. Like many younger, urban Iranians, she reckons the loss of her liberty would be too high a price to pay.
“People in my social circle keep telling me it’s not worth giving up my freedom to get married, and they encourage me to continue living happily single,” said Neda, who has an eclectic range of tattoos and regularly appears in public without the mandatory headscarf.
Marriage appears to be an institution in decline in Iran, and the average age at which people wed is on the rise. Similar trends are evident in other countries, but here it has triggered concern among the Islamic republic’s leaders about declining religious observance, the loss of tradition and ultimately the threat of a falling population.