فصلنامه خانواده پژوهی
پیاپی 64 (زمستان 1399)

The emergence of a new disease called COVID-19 has led to a worldwide pan-demic, and most countries have implem-ented strict health guidelines, including quarantine and social distancing. The aim of the present study is to understand the experience of social distancing and staying at home laws from the perspective of the elderly. A qualitative thematic analysis method was employed, and semi-structured interviews were conducted using snowball sampling with 19 individ-uals between 65 and 85 years of age.
 
In order to observe the health protocols, the interviews were conducted by telep-hone. Data were analyzed using the Braun and Clark thematic analysis method, and three main themes including Blessings, Threats and Strategies were extracted. According to the findings, participants have experienced a combination of po-sitive and negative emotions during their stay at home, and it seems that the wisdom of old age has helped them to use/create coping strategies to overcome their pro-blems. Given that maintaining social relationships is critical for most people of this age, families need to be able to explain the situation in a proper and clear manner, and to provide a variety of opportunities of social relationship for the elderly while following health guidelines.

The present research aims to design an Ontology of Family Consolidation domain based on Women's Studies resources in Iran (books and articles) which were published during the years 1995-2018.  
It was done by extracting the concepts and their relationships and properties from knowledge resources. This applied research was done by mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative combination), with Delphi and Domain analysis approaches by reviewing the subjects of 792 books and 1142 articles. Concepts were evaluated by Delphi method through interviews and questionnaires with 11 ex-perts. Finally, 1 conceptual core, 3 conce-pts, 9 categories, 24 subcategories and 66 sub-concepts were extracted. The made-artifact of this research has 1 conceptual core (super class) called "Family Conso-lidation", two main classes called "Family Consolidation Factors" and "Family Consolidation Results". It contains also 110 classes, 199 subclasses, along with 54 hierarchical relationships. In total 212 semantic properties were identified among the concepts. The present research has been done through protégé ontology management software (Beta 5. 5 edition) and because of software capability it can edit, upgrade and expand. This ontology has been created with the aim to support researchers in exploring knowledge and to retrieve more information from the domain of Women's Studies in Iran.

Due to the cultural and social context of Iranian society, infertility has profound effects on many aspects of people suffe-ring from this condition. In this study, by adopting a qualitative approach and phen-omenological analysis method, dimen-sions of infertility experience and coping strategies in women and men referred to Yazd Reproductive Sciences Institute are analyzed. 
Participants in this study are 32 infertile men and women who were selected by purposive sampling. In this study, two main themes of "infertility is a central issue and needs comprehensive support" and "infertility is a negative event in the life cycle and somewhat acceptable and insignificant" for infertile men and women, respectively, were analyzed by conducting interviews and analyzing them afterward. According to the findings childbearing is considered a manifestation of gender identity. For women, the home environment is full of silence, fear and worry, the husband's family environment is stressful and frustrating. They are always at the forefront of treatment and insist on repeating it. By accepting infert-ility as a problem, constantly seeking tr-eatment, appreciation, being in child-centered environments, and paying attent-ion to children, they try to cope with it. Men consider children as part of their identity and the continuity of generation and family name. Seeking treatment is often unpleasant for them. To get rid of the consequences of infertility, they use strategies such as denial, downplaying infertility, ignoring the opinions of others, and focusing on work and activity. This study showed that in addition to the therapeutic and medical aspects of infertility, various emotional, social, cult-ural, communication, cognitive and eco-nomic aspects of infertility also need attention.

The presence of a child with Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder-ADHD- in a family can affect the performance of family. The aim of this study is to compare perception of equity, perceived social support and forgiveness in mothers of children with ADHD and mothers of healthy children.
 
A sample of 100 people (50 for the group with ADHD was selected by purposive sampling and 50 healthy group by multi-stage cluster sampling among mothers of children with ADHD and healthy ages 7-12 years old, 4th and 8th districts of Tehran, who were studying in the second half of the 97-98 academic year, were selected. Then, Perry Perception of equity measure, the Zimet social support questionnaire, and the Rye forgiveness questionnaire were used. The results showed that there is a significant difference between social support and forgiveness of mothers in the two groups (p<0.05), but none in the perception of equity. Due to the lower levels of forgiveness and perceived social support in mothers of children with ADHD than mothers of healthy Children, this could be due to the adverse effects of having a child with the disorder.

In the case of intermittent employment, a two-week periodic work away from family, creates specific and challenging type of family life. Therefore, the present study aims to develop strategies of social work and counseling regarding the ambi-guity on how to provide these services to these kinds of families. 
The method of this research is qualitative in the form of content analysis and focus group discussion and 29 people were selected through purposeful and voluntary sampling including intermittent staff, spouses, family experts and managers; data were collected to theoretical saturati-on using semi-structured interviews, then the data analysis led to the appearance of the three main abstract categories that includes individual empowerment, conso-lidation of family dynamics and expansion of support networks, consisting of a total of 10 subcategories. Results show, these strategies can be helpful in guiding the roles of professional social assistance and counseling such as education, counseling, intervention, and institutional and non-institutional support to maintain family health and adapt to their specific circu-mstances.

The COVID-19 crisis has a major impact on the life of people around the world. People, their relations, their jobs and all other aspects of life have experienced change during COVID pandemic. The pandemic situation also affects the exis-ting legal agreements such as co-parent-ing. Many countries issued stay-at-home orders which limited contact between people and their family and friends. 
This order has a great impact on families who follow court orders on co-parenting and access to the children. The COVID restrictions have created confusion and distress for them about their rights and responsibilities. The study of legal decisions in Iran and also some countries such as Australia, Canada, and Ireland show that the current COVID restrictions cannot be used as an excuse to breach the legal agreement. The existing court orders remain in place and must be respected as much as possible. However, parents may modify the existing court orders according to the situation and taking into account the best interests of the child while there is a “reasonable excuse”. Some legal princ-iples such as the principle of “no harm and no loss” and the principle of “avoiding hardship” and the article 40 of Iranian Constitution which explains that the exercise of any one’s right cannot be in a manner that harms others. Therefore, if the decision to any change in access or custo-dy is made based on preventing any kind of loss or harm to children which is reasonably probable, there is no civil liability nor criminal one for the breach of legal agreement. This article examines some family law issues which have been litigated  regularly during COVID pande-mic such as the custody and access during COVID, lock-down and quarantine and access to the courts, and different ways to inform people about their legal rights and responsibilities and any modification to them during COVID-19.

Considering the increase in the number of divorces in Iran in recent years, this article aims to examine the situation of divorce in this country and its trend during the period 2005-2015 with a descriptive-analytical approach and using the secondary analysis method. 
For this purpose, existing resources inc-luding census data, registry organization and census sample of 2012 for 15-64-year-old women have been used. The findings showed that the ratio of divorce to marriage in Iran was 10.21 in 2005 and during an incremental period reaching 22.58 in 2015. Also, findings from the study of age and sex patterns showed that in 2015, women between the ages of 20 and 35 and men aged 25 to 40 had a greater risk of divorce The mean life expectancy index showed an increase in one year of cohabitation life expectancy in 2015 compared to 2005. Socio-economic factors and the increase of indicators such as the level of women's education and their independence, the age of marriage, urbanization and population density, and the rate of unemployment, especially men and youth, in interacting with age structure as well as cultural change, have played an important role in the increasing process of divorce during the current decade.