Postponement of marriage and childbearing for hardship

During the 1980s, nuclear families were the norm in the country because women had joined the workforce. Economic penury led to the recovery of the extended family: married couples returned with their children to their parents’ home to fight the impact of the sanctions together. Furthermore, staying in the family home was the only way young couples could marry and form a family. The extended family thus played a vital role in the survival of its members during the embargo but slowed down the modernising of society and the emancipation of women.

The general impoverishment caused a fall in the number of marriages in the country and in the fertility rate. At the end of the war with Iran, the Iraqi government brought in a policy to boost birth rates, with work and financial incentives for each birth. The sanctions reversed this trend: contraception was promoted officially. A 1997 survey showed that Iraqi women had extensive knowledge about methods of contraception and that one in three married women planned their fertility, most of them citing the reason to be the penury created by the embargo.