Influence Of Socio-Cultural Variables And Marital Stability Among Couples
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Influence Of Socio-Cultural Variables And Marital Stability Among Couples
ABSTRACT
The study investigated the impact of socio-cultural determinants on marital stability among couples in Lagos Metropolis, Mushin Local Government Area, Lagos State.
The descriptive research survey was used to assess the opinions of the respondents in this study. The stratified sampling strategy was used to pick the samples for this study. This survey included 160 (one hundred and sixty) respondents to reflect the entire population.
Null hypotheses were developed and tested using one-way ANOVA and t-test statistical methods at the 0.05 level of significance. At the conclusion of the analyses, these findings were obtained:
(1) Sociocultural variables have a substantial influence on marital stability among couples.
(2)According to this theory, religion has no meaningful influence on couples’ marital stability.
(3)Hypothesis one revealed a significant association between couples’ socioeconomic position and marital stability.
(4)It was eventually revealed that communication has a substantial impact on couples’ marital stability. In conclusion, the analyses demonstrated that socio-cultural variables had a considerable influence on couples’ marriage stability in their communities. In the preceding, the researcher made the following recommendations.
This researcher believes that couples should avoid consulting a third party during their conflict. Rather, couples should try to resolve any marital disagreements individually.
Couples should strive to share one faith. It is not desirable for husband and wife to have distinct religious backgrounds or beliefs.
For couples to sustain marital happiness and unity
love must be the watchword in the household. Couples will not be successful in their marriages unless they have love, affection, and trust.
Chapter one
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Culture is broadly defined and understood as people’s way of life, which includes, among other things, their marital relationships. Every adult man or woman strives for a secure and happy marital life, compatibility in love, morals, academics, economics, and, of course, social well-being. This is consistent with Onyema’s (1994) position that marriage is a social institution for the uniting of body and soul.
However, certain socio-cultural elements can have an impact on marital stability. The variables’ influence may be negative, resulting in uneasiness and dissatisfaction in marriage, or positive, resulting in a solid and happy partnership.
These characteristics include cultural diversity (in the event of interethnic marriage), as well as educational, social, economic, and religious backgrounds.
Even age differences are included in these variables. For example, a lady once admitted that she will never marry an illiterate, no matter how wealthy he is, because he may one day use his certificate as toilet tissue. The open confession implies incompatibility and class imbalance in education, both of which may have an impact on marital stability.
The current instability in some marriages in our culture is often the result of social, economic, and cultural changes in people’s lifestyles. According to Amaonye (1996), these changes occurred and continue to occur at such a quick pace that they have yet to be assimilated into our ways of life.
Furthermore, social compatibility is a powerful predictor of marital stability and survival. When couples’ social life diverge, it can pose a significant danger to marital stability since it takes time to understand why some social trips and involvement are vital.
However, recognition of the significant influence of these sociocultural influences on marriage may be a positive step towards marriage stability in our society today.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Every couple’s wish is to spend their lives together, joyfully, until death separates them. However, this is not always the case because at times throughout their life, frictions emerge, resulting in a near or complete breakdown of the marriage. And this is one of the unavoidable obstacles that come with marriage.
Religions, age, socioeconomic situation, social class, educational background, personality, traditional beliefs, and other sociocultural factors all have an impact on marital stability.
And the components are very essential variables in marital stability that many couples fail to recognise; it’s no surprise that there are breakups in many households as a result of a lack of love, misunderstanding, compatibility, age discrepancy, education, religion, and social class.
Many people, for example, have failed to recognise that when couples come from different cultures (inter-ethnic marriage), they must respect each other’s cultures, which translates to respecting the person they married and subsequent marital stability.
Nowadays, marriages collapse owing to a lack of tolerance, mutual trust, patience, non-childbearing, ineffective communication, a lack of positive marital attitudes, similarities between spouses, a lack of maturity, and a low socioeconomic standing.
Finally, when partners do not come from the same socio-cultural background and do not share the same value system and standards, their understanding of themselves varies, and this lack of understanding undoubtedly leads to conflict and instability in marriage.
1.3 Goal of the Study
The primary goal of this study is to identify socio-cultural factors influencing marital stability in Lagos state.
Other study aims include the following:
2. Determine whether there is a link between religion and marital stability among couples.
3. Determine whether ethnicity affects marriage success in couples.
4. Determine whether communication influences marital stability.
5. To study if socioeconomic position influences marriage success.
1.4 Research Questions.
The following research questions will help in the conduct of this study:
1. Will socio-cultural elements have a substantial influence on marital stability?
2. How will couples’ religious backgrounds influence their marital stability?
3. Does a couple’s socioeconomic status have a substantial influence on their marital stability?
4. How would a lack of communication effect a couple’s marital stability?
1.5 Research Hypotheses.
The following research hypotheses were created and tested in this study:
1. There is no substantial relationship between socio-cultural variables and couples’ marital stability.
2. Religion has no substantial influence on marital stability.
3. Communication has no major influence on couples’ marital stability.
4. Is there no significant relationship between couples’ socioeconomic levels and marital stability?
1.6 Significance of the Study
Marriage should be contracted after due planning. Marriages that are not planned but are imposed on partners in order to rescue the family or families from disgrace should be avoided like plague. Before a man marries his wife, both of them must achieve the age of maturity. They should mature socially, economically, temperamentally, and monetarily.
They must retain feelings of love and affection in order to have a happy marriage. The wife must feel wanted, as well as cared for and secure. The husband, too, requires love and care to maintain a strong marriage.
Marriage partners should avoid cognitive errors, which means they should not expect the other person to notice it. As a result, if the husband wants the wife to behave a specific manner, he must advise her of his preferences, and the same is true for the wife to her husband.
Sexual compatibility promotes marriage stability, but marital oneness is heavily influenced by sex. In truth, sex is a type of communication, arguably the most acceptable, in which two people (husband and wife) express their unity of mind and feeling. Therefore, spouses in marriage should be socially compatible.
Couples: The study’s findings and recommendations will be extremely beneficial to couples who are currently married as well as those who plan to marry. This is because they will discover the aspects that lead to marital stability or harmony in marriage.
Adolescents will benefit from the study, particularly those who are of marriageable age. This is because they will realise that there are some variables that can help marriages grow and thrive rather than fading out. They would understand the importance of social and cultural issues, as well as money and wealth, in preserving relationships.
The society will learn from this study how finance might help marriages work smoothly. This is because marriages that lack enough financial resources are prone to strife.
To have a successful marriage, couples should avoid in-law meddling or the third party syndrome. They should not wash their soiled lining in public. They should belong to the same religious denomination, have the same goals, keep domestic tranquilly, and let love and affection dominate their lives.
1.7 Delimitation.
The scope of this study is the impact of socio-cultural determinants on marital stability in Lagos state. A case study of the Mushin local government region.
1.8 Scope and Limitations of the Study
The research will focus on the Mushin local government area of Lagos State. Because the research will solely focus on Mushin, the generalisability of the findings will be limited.
However, given the scope of this study, it cannot reflect all of the marital issues experienced by all couples in Lagos State; therefore, the findings can only be applied to other couples in comparable situations.
There may be more issues that arise among couples in Lagos State, but this study will focus on the ones identified in the hypotheses.
1.9 Conceptual Definitions of Terms
To facilitate interpretation of this work, all conceptual words were defined as follows:
1. Culture: This is described as a term emerged totality of ideas and objects produced by men in their historical experience of 1910 America. Anthropologists used the term “culture” to refer to the distractive characteristics that distinguish various tribal cultures.
2. Culture Heritage: This is the process of bringing together people from various views and cultural backgrounds in order to share a similar interest and see a shared purpose.
3. Marriage: The legal union of two people of opposite genders as husband and wife.
4. Socioeconomic Status (SES): This term refers to the combined impact of income, occupation, reduction, cultural interests or values, and prestige on social standing. (Bidwell, Vendor, 1999).
5. Social Status: According to Mey (1998), social status refers to groups of people who have similar degrees of prestige in the community and share similar cultural tastes, interests, consumption patterns, and lifestyles.
6. Stability: Something that is fixed, unlikely to shift or alter position. Simply put, the ability to maintain stability.
7. Cohabitation: The act of a man and a woman living together without a legal marriage as husband and wife.
8. Communication: Adanma (1980) defines communication as the act of interacting between two individuals or from one person or group to another. It is the act of sending news or information from the source to the recipient via a medium.
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