Objective: The present study aims to develop a grounded theory model of family sustainability with an emphasis on cultural structures.
Methods: This qualitative study employed the grounded theory approach. The research field was the city of Isfahan, and the participants consisted of fourteen experts and specialists in family studies. Sampling was conducted using a purposeful–theoretical method, and data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Data analysis was carried out through open, axial, and selective coding.
Results: Findings revealed that the grounded theory model of family sustainability with emphasis on cultural structures revolves around several core categories. Causal conditions: the family-oriented cultural lifeworld, semantic foundations of family sustainability, dynamics of cultural–institutional disjunction within the family, normalization of rupture in the marriage institution, transformation in mate selection, cultural fragmentation, and social atomization. Contextual conditions: cohesive norms and interventionist cultural life. Intervening conditions: dialogical life, media dominance over family life, and structural tensions of social networks. Strategies: cultural socialization, regeneration of the local–cultural system, gradual formation of cultural order, and simplification of marriage rituals. Consequences: individual development, stability of the social system, and sustainability of governance structures. The core category emerging from these relationships is “family sustainability as the reproduction of interactive–institutional cohesion within a cultural context.”
Conclusions: The study concludes that family sustainability is not merely an individual or institutional phenomenon but rather a dynamic and future-oriented process. It is continuously reproduced through interactions among family members in connection with broader cultural, social, and institutional structures.
Type of Study:
Original |
Subject:
Educational Psychology Received: 2025/06/7 | Accepted: 2025/08/23 | Published: 2025/09/1