Abstract Although Iran is classified as a developing country,for Iranian women, the fertility process has changed from a biological behavior to a reflexive action, similar to the experience of developed countries. Their reflexivity as social actors has led to some changes in women’s fertility preference interactively. The main theme of the current study is related to the lived experiences and perceptions of childbirth among fertile women according to the causal, intervening, and contextual conditions. The current research applies a qualitative approach by using the grounded theory method, and semistructured interviews on fertility’s perspectives were conducted with 42 wives (living in Mashhad City, Iran and ranging from 15 to 49 years of age). Data analy- sis and interpretation were conducted through coding and comparison based on the Corbin and Strauss paradigm. A declining trend of fertility as an interclass pattern in a developing country such as Iran is inconsistent with what sociodemographic theories have proposed to date. The remarkable decline in fertility in Iran includes a decrease in the total fertility rate from 7 children per woman in 1986 to 2.0 in 2000 (Erfani and McQuillan in J Biosoc Sci 40(3):459–478, 2008). The interclass characteristic of fertility shows that cultural promotion, media advertisements, and top-down demographic policies regarding women’s fertility are no longer effective in Iran. In addition, analysis of the fertility experience of women reveals that wom- en’s actions regarding childbearing differ from the lower class, with women facing economic challenges, to the upper class, with epistemic world-view challenges; in other words, owing to their world view, women in the upper class have reserva- tions regarding fertility. The unwillingness to have children and the desire to have fewer children are the consequences of individualism, national identity crisis, lack of well-being, and perfectionist fertility, and affect the fertility’s perspective of Ira- nian women in Mashhad City. The interclass feature of women’s fertility reveals that this cannot be imputed to improved human development indices; there is a general reflexivity action in various types of fertility in Iran.

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