CHAPTER ONE
1.0Introduction
1.1    Background to the Study
Scholars such as Nicholas (1995) and Adams (2000), have theorized on individual behaviour, socialization process, fathering process and their influence on adolescents. For instance, when children watch the behaviour of a model, they quickly imitate both the specific responses and generalized response patterns of the model, especially as fathers are viewed as models by their children. Similarly, the child may face the trauma of neglect when the father who is supposed to be supportive and involved is not around to give appropriate model, care, comfort and supervision to the child.
The sociological theory of symbolic interaction posits that children and infants are ignorant of rules and role of the society when they are born, and to turn them to socially responsible being, they must acquire new roles by their interaction with significant others, especially their fathers, mothers and siblings. This study therefore, will focus on the relationship between step-fathering and personality development among adolescent in schools.
As a primary socializing agent the family’s impact on man is overwhelming and total. This is why it was asserted by Onyejiaku (1991) that no child is born into the word with the knowledge of right and wrong rather it is when he/she socializes with societal norms and values that he/she begins to relate with people around him/her effectively. The responsibility of raising up a child to become socially and psychologically well adjusted adult is mainly that of the parents especially, the father (Martins, 1983).
According to Lamb (1997), a father is a man who begets a child a man parent, the founder of a family or a race, one who exercises parental care over another (whether his biological children or his step-children), a guardian and protector within the family role sharing. Among parents exists the father is a expected to discipline the child and ensure he is brought up in a proper way. The father is the most significant figure in the family the head of the household in all important matters.
Pleck (1987) states that step-fathering is a system or pattern of fathering in which a man fathers a child/children who do not biologically belong to him. Step-fathering or step-mothering is a usual phenomenon in both the developed and the developing countries of the world.
According to Bumpass, et al (1990), approximately one-half of all marriages are a remarriage for at least one percent of all children in the United States lived with the mother and a step-father. As the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1995) put it, an estimated one third of U.S.A. children live in a step family house hold before they reach adulthood. Although the remarriage rates are lower, simile, prevalence rates have been reported in Canada and Europe. The large number of parents and children who live in a step families has prompted researches to study how well family members adjust to living in a step family especially where the man is not the biological father of the child he is living with.
As Lewis (1996) puts it, man’s fathering style is influenced by his enthusiasm for being a father, his occupation, his temperament the way the family members relate to each other. His own father’s behaviour, the images of how to be a father projected by the mass media and the number of children he has. Lewis went further to states that no single style of fathering or mothering is right for every one. The father who uses his style, educates the child socially, emotionally and intellectually.
Chaton (1995) sees a father as a main stabilizing influence on his children who may face the out side world with enough confidence.
However, Pleck (1987) identified four typologies of step fatherhood to include:
Step-father as distant bread winner, step father as sex role model and ‘new’ step father who nurturs and is interested in is young children/step children as well as engaged in a paid job.