www.sciencejournal.in Volume- 4 Issue- 2 (2015) ISSN: 2319–4731 (p); 2319–5037 (e) © 2015 DAMA International. All rights reserved. 314 CHALLENGE BETWEEN MARRIED LIFE NECESSITIES AND SELF-REALIZATION AMONG WOMEN IN IRANIAN FAMILIES Khadijeh Keshavarz Department of Sociology, Iran. ABSTRACT One of the important challenges of families in the contemporary world as confirmed by many studies is the challenge between advancing the necessities of marriage and the concern of self-realization between couples. Dissatisfaction of marriage and finding it an obstacle to pursue the personal dreams, wishes and demands is known in the routine expression of husbands and wives (As the results of the study would show, the comments made by the women under study is a proof of the research topic to this effect). The study seeks answering the question what the link is between life realities and dreams of women of the middle class in the married life and what strategies are adopted by them to remove the possible distance between the realities and their dreams. Increased number of divorce cases, emotional divorces, increased age of marriage, and general pessimism of the youth toward marriage and their understanding of marriage as a restricting factor within the framework of a static institution has completely interrupted the women's link to the lifestyle they enjoyed when they were single. This is considered as one of the topics that require study in the area of family according to understanding of the challenges of Iranian contemporary family vis-à-vis the importance of self-realization for the women of middle class. In this study, the researcher does not claim to generalize or draw inclusive conclusions using the findings. It is tried to rely on the results of the profound interviews that were made with 12 married women of middle class living in Tehran and answers are sought for the following minor questions: 1. How deep is the gap between dreams of the youth and the realities ahead of them? 2. What is the relation between the private life and social life of the women of middle class? 3. What is the relation between power of men and women in the families and how does it change? 4. What strategies have been adopted by the women under study to establish a balance in their families? INTRODUCTION The author studies the issue in the context of the Iranian society and relying on profound interviews made arguments about her initial analysis of the existing issue and some of the theories in this area. When these theories are called up, part of their theoretical literature that has raised from the heart of facing the similar issues with the issue of this research are used and it is tried to reach a structured understanding of the challenges that the contemporary Iranian family faces when facing its study. In industrial society, family was the horizon, i.e., the dream of all men and women. This dream was gradually replaced by another model based on self-flourishing values, originality and equality between men and women (Marquet, 2003). It seems that there are contradictory demands for family, love and personal freedom nowadays. These contradictions are in the heart of what is called by the German sociologist couple, Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Grensheim Beck as ‘Natural arena of love’. According to their argument, traditions, rules and instructions that govern the personal relations are useless and currently the individuals face an endless sequence of selections that form part of the construction, regulation, adjustment, benefiting or ending of links together. This reality that marriage happens voluntarily and not for economic purposes or by the pressure of families brings about freedoms and new restrictions with it. They know our era as an era full of contradictory interests of family, profession, love and freedom to pursue individual goals. This clash of values is felt intensively in personal relations, particularly when there are two ‘life stories of labor market’ and not one that has to be organized (Giddens, 2007). It seems that one of the most important problems in the family of today is the link between necessities of married life and the concerns about self-realization. As Becks explained, in most of the cases, the forms of married life that emerged 40 years ago (separations, divorces, combined families, single parents, negotiated families, etc.) can often be considered painful because of the results of the decisions that are used to link the good and bad aspects of discrepancies between necessities of professional world and the family expectations. There are decisions such as change of the place of living following change of place of work, selection of jobs with less salary, but in the meantime more time could be allocated to children and this is applicable for the men and women nowadays although such decisions often have different consequences for the two genders. Also if such consequences concern the private relations between the two genders, how could one move together with someone else who is also after self-realization (Marquet, 2003).