INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

Marriages before the end of the 20th century were bonded with traditional rites and taboos. Marriages, whether solemnized in court, church or mosque are usually binded with legal vows to love, honour and cherish till death do them part, divorce rate was therefore, seemingly negligible (Karney, Story and Bradbury, 2013).

Unfortunately, most of such rites and vows are apparently becoming unrealistic in this present dispensation of new morality, which places high premium on absolute freedom of a person to do anything he or she desires. This is evidenced in the overwhelming increase in the rate of single parents which is necessitated a deliberate divorce arrangement of couples. The devastating effect of this on the offspring’s appears to be grave (Cherlin, 2018). Hence Eze-Echesi (2009) reminded and emphatically warned Nigerians that “the family is a sacred unit and should be respected. It should also be protected and supported, because without the family there will be no life and there would be no world”.

Marriage can be defined as a legal union between husband and wife.  It is recognized by all and publicly accepted by the society as a pre-condition for the formation of the family. According to Osuafor (1990) marriage is the approval of social pattern whereby two or more persons establish a family.  Marriage can then be said to be the process through which a social union is formed between a man and a woman or women for the purpose of procreation, which is bearing and rearing children. Leneman (1999) defines marriage as legally recognized agreement between a man and a woman making them husband and wife, the state of being married.  In most studies, it has been observed that the single most important ingredient of marriage is companion in doing things together with the husband as the most valuable aspect of marriage.  It is also noted that emotional support is an important ingredient of marriage for wives.  Both parties expect each other to encourage themselves in difficulty, sympathize with each other on failure, celebrate in success, embrace their friends and defy his enemies and to be calm when the other is angry.  Emotional security is an aspect of emotional support (Leneman, 1999).

However, marriage being a union is found to be characterized by certain demands and expectations on the part of the couple.  In addition, such demands and expectations embrace issues like loyalty in marriage, faithfulness, acceptance of responsibilities, emotional security, and companionship and so on (Chiappori and Weiss, 2010).

One may observe that a marital relationship devoid of above factors often face a lot of problems and generate a lot of stains like marital discord, lack of emotional closeness to ones partner, psychological separation, lack of mutual understanding, role conflict, financial conflict, lack of effective communication, sexual conflict and unhappiness which obviously can lead to divorce (Peters, 2018).

The world Book encyclopedia (2005) defined divorce as the ending by law of a valid marriage.  It is usually distinguished from an annulment, which is a declaration by a court that marriage is invalid (not legally binding) because of some defect at the time of marriage ceremony.

Divorce is legal dissolution of marriage bond. Once the couple decides to divorce, they are free to remarry again. In Nigeria, there has been the increase in the rate of divorce. There are two factors influencing the rising divorce rates in the Nigeria. The first factor is both men and women are relying less on one another for economic survival. As women gain status in their work place or on their businesses, they often want to stand on their own and prefer to control their lives’ affair which enabling them to be less dependent on their husbands, the heads of household. Women who are gainfully employed and self-sufficient may be more willing to dissolve a marriage because they are not perceived as a financially dependent spouse. Financial stability allows for the female head of household to have more flexibility to exit a broken marriage. Secondly, when both male and female parents gain political status in the society, one seems to be superior over the over due to political gain. They seem not have chance to look after the family, especially the female ones which more likelihood be the victims of divorce (Amato and Cheadle, 2018).

Divorce is a complex event that can be viewed from multiple perspectives. For example, sociological research has focused primarily on structural and life course predictors of marital disruption, such as social class, race, and age at first marriage (Bumpass, Martin, & Sweet, 1991; White, 1991).

Psychological research, in contrast, has focused on dimensions of marital interaction, such as conflict management (Gottman, 1994), or on personality characteristics, such as antisocial behavior or chronic negative affect (Leonard & Roberts, 1998). One limitation of these approaches is that neither considers the individual’s perceptions about why the divorce occurred. Indeed, when explaining what caused their marriages to end, people appear to give relatively little credence to widely studied factors such as age at marriage or conflict resolution skills.

Divorce is a severe family disorganization and a common topic of gossip in our society.  This is due to the fact that divorcees are regarded by the society as the worst people in morals, deviants and insatiable elements (Burt, Barnes, McGue and Iacono, 2018).  A divorced woman is regarded as being of such bad character that a man cannot think of remarrying her within a short space of time in the same community.  It is the belief of most people that once the first marriage fails; it is never easy to be successful with other subsequent marriages (Malone, Lansford and Castellino, 2014). Divorce has been shown to have some socio-psychological after effects on both partners and their children.  For instance lack of parental role model (Goode, 2005) or even emotional anxiety and negative attitude towards life.