Document Type : Research/Original/Regular

Authors

• fateme malekkhani ¹
• zahra bidaki ²
• zahra malekkhani ³

¹ university of tehran

² tarbiat modares

³ payamnoor university

Abstract

Considering the matching of reproductive age with the age of education and its decline after the completion of higher education, there is a need to pay special attention to having children while studying. This article specifically focuses on the attitudes and challenges of students towards the issue of having children. Data collection was done in two stages; In the first stage, an in-depth semi-structured interview was conducted with 15 students. In the next step, using the initial findings, new questions were formulated and published in the form of an electronic questionnaire in the virtual space (university groups) and 60 valid answers were received. The data were coded based on Atreid Stirling's thematic analysis model in an iterative process. In the process of analysis, 75 basic themes, 8 organizing themes and 2 inclusive themes were identified. The overarching themes are "necessity of having children from the perspective of students" and "obstacles and needs of students in the field of having children". Under the first theme, four organizing themes are "individual motivations", "family motivations", "social motivations" and "religious motivations", and under the second concept, five organizing themes are "economic needs", "cultural needs", "psychological needs", There are "needs in the field of health" and "facilitation-support needs". Finally, by reviewing the existing policies and laws and using the experience of family-friendly universities in the world, solutions were presented to improve the status of having children in this group.

Keywords

• Student
• childbearing
• challenges
• obstacles
• family friendly university

Main Subjects

• parenting