Motherhood and Family Life Adjustment Patterns Among In-School Adolescents In Delta State, Nigeria

Filed in Articles by on July 5, 2022

Motherhood and Family Life Adjustment Patterns Among In-School Adolescents In Delta State, Nigeria.

ABSTRACT

The study sought to investigate the motherhood and family life adjustment patterns among inschool adolescents in Delta State, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey design.

The population of the study consisted of all the 548 in-school adolescent mothers in senior secondary school two(SSII) in public secondary schools in Delta State. The sample size for the study was in-school adolescent mothers selected through multi-stage sampling procedure. Four research questions and four null hypotheses guided the study.

An instrument titled “motherhood and family life adjustment pattern questionnaire (MFLAPQ)” was used for data collection. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument and a overall reliability co-efficient of 0.85 was obtained.

Data were collected by the researcher with the help of two research assistants. Data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the four research questions, while t-test was used to test the four null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance.

The results of the findings revealed among others that adolescent motherhood could be due to exposure of young girls to street hawking, family poverty which makes the girls to accept having premarital sex and so on.

That adolescent motherhood makes girls drop out of school, exposes young girls to poverty, exposes babies born by young girls to health problems but does not lead to societal rejection of young mothers and neglect of the girls.

It was recommended among others that government should through the ministry of education organize sexual education intervention programmes to enlighten the youth on the causes, consequences, family life adjustment patterns and strategies for minimizing in-school adolescent motherhood.

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study Adolescence is an important stage of human growth and development. It is an important stage because series of changes take place within an individual during this stage which brings the individual to adulthood.

For individuals to move from childhood to adulthood, certain changes and orientations are necessary. To this end, Onyejiaku (1991) refers to adolescence as a period of intense socialization and often a time of equal interest, loneliness and acceptance by peers.

Obikeze (2001) defines adolescence as a period of transition from childhood to adulthood characterized by physical, physiological and social developments. Obikeze adds that it is the period between the onset of puberty and maturity, corresponding with the ages 12 to the early 20’s.

Mengal (2010) defines adolescence as a period of development from 13th years to 19th years or in a strict sense from onset of attainment of maturity. Adolescence as a stage of human development is associated with certain characteristics.

According to Ngwoke and Eze (2010), adolescence begins with the onset of puberty, the period of physical growth and development that brings to an end childhood and enables the growing person to achieve adult size, shape and sexual reproductive capacity.

The researchers further explain that in females, adolescence is characterized by signs like production of sex hormones such as the progesterone and estrogen which cause the beginning of breast development, first pubic hair, widening of lips, the growth spurt, menarche (the beginning of menstruation), and completion of breast and pubic hair growth.

Physically, adolescence is a period of growth which is characterized by appearance of menstruation, changes in height, changes in body proportion, development in primary and secondary sex characteristics, change in hair growth and physiological changes among others.

This suggests that adolescent females are to some extent ready for child bearing. 1 2 Adolescent is a young person growing from a child into an adult (Wehmeier, 2001). Adolescent can be marked biologically and physically by onset of maturity and the termination of physical growth, cognitively as change in the ability to think abstractly and socially prepared for adult roles.

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