Sociological Explanation of Social Factors Effective on Divorce (The Case of Ghaemshahr City)

One of the most important social problems with complex dimensions is divorce, which brings about the devastation of family life. Family is perceived as one of the fundamental pillars and main institutions of every society. Therefore sociologists cannot afford to keep themselves away from family analysis and its changes. They have always tried to study it via certain and special perspectives. Moreover, everybody agrees that in none of the previous historical eras the family has been so widely suffered from the problem of divorce and its side effects than our contemporary era. The rates of marriage and divorce registered in Iran indicate that the number of divorces is increasing more than the number of marriages. So this phenomenon in Iran is considered as a challenge or serious social problem. A review of divorce's statistics in Iran during 2012 (6 percent growth in proportion to the previous year) indicates the increasing rate of this problem in general and particularly in the region under study in this paper. It appears that the more industrialization in cities and villages, the more new conflicts in previously traditional communities. Such modern changes have devastated the institution of family rather than protecting it, and this can have wide effects on the health of divorced couples, and children. This indicates a critical condition which needs to be studied in order to protect the family and reduce the rate of divorce. Because social damages depend on each other, expansion in one may cause others to expand as well so we must study divorce to prevent other problems from happening and/or expanding. Â The research method is casual-comparative. For comparability, it was tried to converge two groups i.e. divorced and non-divorced individuals. Statistical population includes two groups of divorced and non-divorced of citizens in the city of Ghaemshahr. Sample size include 180 divorced subjects whose formal process of divorce have been finished in the court, and another group of 100 married subjects who live in their families and are not separated. Sampling method for non-divorced group was snowball sampling and for divorced group, convenient sampling, both of which are non-random methods of sampling. Discussion of Results and The Results of the study indicate that the variable of educational differences may lead to disability in satisfying the spouse's expectations. Also, opinion-related difference of the couples, interference of family members in the couple`s marital life, and unsuitable job condition can be considered as effective variables on increasing divorce. The interesting point is that difference in birthplace has no effect on divorce occurrence in contrast to the research primary pre-assumption. Also, the discussion about research hypotheses and their theoretical analysis can be explained according to exchange theory, as it predicts that when a person (husband or wife) assesses the costs of a relationship more than its interests, in this regard such person assumes the relationship unequal and will become disappointed to get satisfied in his/her expectations for the other party. As a result, we may expect a rupture in the relationship and consequently occurrence of divorce. Our research findings indicate that those spouses who were not able to meet their spouse's expectations, they face divorce more than others. This finding approves exchange theory and also the findings of Rousta (2010), Riahi & colleagues (2007) and Dohrati (2007).