The Relationship Between Spouse Selection Criteria and Feeling Adaptation of Family Foundation with a Look at the Teachings of Islamic Marriage in Married Teachers Living in Zahedan City, Iran

Family health is so vital that it can ensure the individual's and society's mental health. On the other hand, family health is ensured by proper marriage. The issue of choosing a spouse is fundamental. Wrong choice is one of the factors in incompatibility; also, spouse selection criteria and the existence of religious beliefs may play an essential role in strengthening the family. Marriages based on romantic and friendly criteria have less religious affiliation. Couples' interactions are also effective in predicting the type of marriage, in which adaptation also plays an important role. Flexible people have mental health, because this feature in turn makes them care about the other party's health. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the relationship between the criteria for choosing a spouse and the family's sense of adaptation by looking at the teachings of Islamic marriage.

The present study was correlational, employing structural equation modeling. The statistical population included all married teachers living in Zahedan City, Iran, and the sample size of the present study was estimated to be 246 based on structural equation modeling. The inclusion criteria were the willingness to cooperate and the employment and marriage of teachers. The exclusion criteria were the incompleteness of the questionnaires, not living in Zahedan and the existence of marital disputes and psychological disorders. The study data was gathered via the Preference Criteria of Spouse Selection Inventory (Refahi et al., 2010), the Family Adaptation and Cohesion Scales (Olson et al., 1985), and the Questionnaire of Adherence to the Teachings of Islam about Treatment of Spouses (Qudusi et al., 2015). To analyze the data, Smart PLS version 3 and SPSS version 20 software and descriptive and inferential statistics, including frequency, percentage, and mean and modeling of structural equations at a significance level of 0.001, were used.

The results showed that the direct path coefficient between the criteria of choosing a spouse and family flexibility (p<0.001, β=0.546) and the direct path coefficient between adherence to the teachings of Islamic marriage and family flexibility (p<0.001, β=0.438) were positive and meaningful.

According to the results, there are significant direct effects between the variables. In addition, the spouse selection criteria and adherence to the teachings of Islamic marriage have a significant role in the family's sense of adaptation.