PREVALENCE, CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF DIVORCE IN ENUGU URBAN (PSYCHO-SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS)

Abstract

The family occupies a pivotal place in every society. This is because the sanity of any society depends on the family hence the bedrock of every city, state, nation, continent and world. Divorce is not entirely bad because sometimes it a relief to a dysfunctional or unproductive marriage especially when the marriage seems irredeemable by both parties. This is because a healthy family produces a healthy society while a weak family breeds weak, corrupt and disorganized society. Therefore this paper examines the prevalence, causes and consequences of divorce in Enugu urban. Literary research and different academic works in the phenomenon of divorce world over expanded the investigation. Two research questions and hypotheses guided the study accordingly. Researcher structured questionnaire face validated by three experts in the field of Psychology, Sociology and Measurement and Evaluation were administered to randomly chosen 120 residents of the city. Descriptive statistics were used to answer the research questions while Chi square was used to analyze the hypotheses. Cronbach alpha was used to obtain the reliability co-efficient of 0.73. The findings of the study indicated that respondents perceived psychological, social and economic factors as some of the major causes of divorce in the city. It was recommended amongst others that traditional and modern marriage counselling should be strengthened in order to give couples training in family responsibilities, communication and conflict management skills.