INFLUENCE OF PEER PRESSURE AND PARENTING STYLES ON FEMALE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS PERCEPTION TOWARDS ABORTION

1.1 Introduction

Peer pressure is defined as when people of one’s age encourages or urges one to do something or to keep off from doing something else, irrespective of the person’s desire to or not to (Uche, 2010). Parenting style is one of the primary determinants of a child’s outcome because parents are the first contact of a child and also their primary role model. Peer pressure is influence that a peer group, observers or individuals exert to encourage others to change their attitudes, values or behaviours and conform to the group norms. Peer pressure is the influence of a social group on an individual (Black, 2012).

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

Family or parental influences, has also been identified as a social factors. The place of the family or parents as the first agent of a child’s socialization holds a significant place in character formation of a child. From birth, a parent will mold and shape behaviours suitable to the norms of society through childrearing. If parents act in a negative way, the child is more likely to follow their parent’s negative attitude. They are also more likely to generalize this attitude to the rest of the society. Thus, parents could have much influence over their child’s behaviour.

Social factors are factors interacting with a person’s social environment that could influence or induce positive or negative behaviour in a person at school, at home or in a society. Douglas & Strauss (2007) noted that social factors relates to factors influencing ones psycho-social development and how interaction with one’s social environment influence how a person behaves. It was first commonly used by psychologist Erik Erikson in his stages of social development in the school and home to include: lack of proper interaction with teachers and students; inefficient school administration; unqualified teachers; large and oversized schools; overcrowded classrooms; disjointed family (of students); peer pressure, domestic violence and parental influence or inadequacies among others.

Therefore, the perception of students about them will be the focus of this study. Peer, directly or indirectly influence adolescents to indulge in risky behaviour. Direct peer pressure may occur in the form of encouragement in anti-social or deviant activities like rape, theft, substance abuse, among others. On the other hand, “indirect peer influences can occur when youth associate with peers who drink or smoke, take harmful drugs (Douglas &Strauss, 2007). Therefore, it perhaps becomes problematic as children grow seeing their peers as role model.

Learning acceptable behaviour is a part of socialization process of a child at home. Osarenren, Nwadinigwe and Anyama (2013) noted that the negative aspect of family life is the effect of home conflict or domestic violence on children. From in frequent slaps, pushes, grabs, or shoves to frequent and severe life-threatening assaults, domestic violence in its various forms could affect a child’s upbringing and social consequences. Domestic violence between parents and children, children and their siblings, children and their loved ones at home could influence how they behave to others and their perception about things. Hence, children could be severely traumatized by witnessing domestic violence or being victims of the conflict themselves.

Children and youths are very valuable human resource because they ensure the continuity of any society. Deviant behaviour is also common among them (youths) especially in their formative years when character is formed to suit the expectation of the family and the society. Deviance is behaving contrary to acceptable norms and expectation of a society. Every society has specific behaviour standards and ways in which people are supposed to act. Sometimes these are the paradigms for predictable behaviour in the society. It can be described as a violation of culturally acceptable norm or a failure to conform to set rules and ways of doing something that is traditionally prescribed.

A behaviour considered as deviant in one society may be seen as non-deviant in another society. For example, the traditional African social custom appreciates chastity, modest dressing, good morals, decent behaviour, and respect for elders, handwork and integrity and frowns at premarital and extra marital sexual relationship. It also prohibits marriage between same sex such as homosexuality and consanguine sexual relationship. The Nigerian society frowns at alternative marriage styles and parenthood, for example, single parenthood and cohabitation. In some other societies, these unacceptable behaviours may be acceptable. That is why; deviance is relative to time and place.

Deviant behaviour in a society are not limited to what goes on within the school system alone. Factors beyond the fence of the schools such as family background, socio-economic status of the child, imported culture, role models in the community, peer influence are some of the causes (Dalhatua & Yunusa, 2013). Teachers are sometimes blamed for being incompetent in teaching children the right morals in class. This could be wrong since teachers are not the only influencing factors inside the school and therefore cannot be blamed wholly. Also, inclining educational problem on educators could be incorrect as no general agreement has been reached as to one single cause of deviance in today’s society.

Deviant behaviours include but are not limited to: truancy, anti–social behaviour, disrespect for constituted authority, sexual harassment, rape, arson, destruction, delinquency that are portrayed by children and adolescent. Adesoji (2010) attributed this menace to peer pressure. He noted that youths break away from their families and try out different roles and situations to figure out who they are and where they fit into the world. Hence, they spend more time with their friends and less time with their families. This is a normal, healthy stage of development, but the growing distance between parents and their children and the increasing importance of friends can be a source of conflict and anger within the family.

The desire to impress friends and be accepted by peers is one of the strongest forces in adolescents that leads teenagers to do things that they know are wrong, dangerous, or risky. This is what Adesoji (2010) described as “peer pressure”. According to Him, peer pressure is the influence exerted by a peer group in encouraging a person to change his or her attitudes, values, or behaviours to conform to the group. On the positive side, the pressure to keep up with the peer group can also inspire teens to achieve goals that they might never aim for on their own. This explains why most young people prefer to be in the company of their peers, who offer mutual support in contrast to their parents, who they perceive as authoritarian.

It is the zeal of every reasonable parent to address the changing behaviour of their children. However, high increase in juvenile delinquencies, high rate of early school dropouts, increase in street children and high rate of crime, both in towns and communities, could be linked to poor parental guidance in the early child development (Melgosa, 2002). He asserted that majority of the children involved in deviant behaviour, are either staying alone, staying far from their parents, with their peers or were brought up in a violence environment. Most of them also opt to engage in detrimental lifestyles of drugs, alcoholism, and sexual crimes. This explains why alcoholic parents, parents with criminal behaviour and parents with discipline systems which are strict, too lax or inconsistent, broken homes or those with problematic relationships; also tend to influence delinquent behaviour in children.

The home or family also may contribute to deviant behaviour both at childhood and adulthood (Hagan & Foster, 2001). An intact family can be said to be a functioning union between a mother and a father, so when a break up exist, the turmoil may affect a child to a greater extent. A functioning family is beneficial to a child than a dysfunctional one. Family separation could result in child neglect which generally could lead to a child’s deviant behaviour like leaving home, hooliganisms, stealing, drug addiction and alcoholism among others. If a person is brought up in a violence prone environment, his/her emotions could be influenced negatively to engage in deviant activities or indiscipline behaviour.

Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Influence of Peer Pressure and Parenting Styles on Female University Students Perception towards Abortion.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

It is generally observed that the majority of university undergraduates arrogate specific deadlines to their stay on campus and may want to maximize both the main and peripheral opportunities while it lasts with the perception that the society still regards them as late adolescents or youths who could be excused for certain misdemeanors. Unfortunately, while passing out on record time is highly appreciated, passing through the university campus without allowing the university decorum to pass through the undergraduates is quite sad and drug abuse, premarital sex and abortion are index of this among most adolescents.

Moreover, the independence granted to tertiary students has led them to take a position and views different from those of their parents and adults and to act in conformity with their peers, however unconventional the act may be. Owuamanam (cited in Alade, 2013) opined that university students of today seem to value sexual activities more than their counterparts of the past years. Conger (1979) also believed that in all developmental events of adolescence, the most dramatic is the increase in sexual drive and the new and often mysterious feelings and thoughts that accompany it. Invariably, this has led to adolescent pregnancy over the years and in turn led to abortion.

In Nigeria studies on unwanted pregnancies and induced abortion among female university students are few, with a lot of studies done at the health facility level. This point out to the need of more university-based studies, because most of the maternal deaths due to abortion complications occur outside the formal health system. The problem of unwanted pregnancy and induced abortion at the university is very big but much underreported; Women are not open to discuss on the sensitive issue of abortion and unplanned pregnancies. So this study will provide information on the real situation at the university level.

Several studies have been conducted to determine factors contributing to the unwanted pregnancies and induced abortion in Nigeria, Reasons includes; poverty, lack of moral and financial support from the partner, disruption of education and employment, family building preferences i.e. need to postpone childbearing or to achieve health spacing between births, relationship problems with the partner/husband, risk to maternal or foetal health, pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, most of the time it is poor access to contraceptives or contraceptive failure. In many countries, young women and men are under strong social and peer group pressure to engage in premarital sex. Surveys have shown that, on average, 43 % of women in sub Saharan Africa started to have sex before the age of 20 (Ugoji, 2013), when this is coupled with limited accessibility of effective and modern contraceptives, then the problem of unintended pregnancies as well as induced abortion is bound to rise.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Influence of Peer Pressure and Parenting Styles on Female University Students Perception towards Abortion. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To determine if parenting style have significant effect on perceptions of abortion among female university student
2. To determine if there is a significant relationship between peer group and the attitude towards abortion among female university students
3. To ascertain if age have any significant influence on the perception of female university student towards abortion
4. To find out if there is a joint influence of peer group and parenting styles on the perception of female university students towards abortion

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Does peer group and parenting styles have any significant influence on the perception of female university students towards abortion?
• Does parenting style have significant effect on perceptions of abortion among female university student?
• Is there any significant relationship between peer group and the attitude towards abortion among female university students?
• Does the age of female university student influence their perception towards abortion?
• What are the joint influence of peer group and parenting styles on the perception of female university students towards abortion?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

Hypothesis One

• H0: There is no significant effect on perceptions of abortion among female university student
• H1: There is a significant effect on perceptions of abortion among female university student

Hypothesis Two

• H0: There is no significant relationship between peer group and the attitude towards abortion among female university students.
• H1: There is a significant relationship between peer group and the attitude towards abortion among female university students.

Hypothesis Three

• H0: There is no significant influence on the perception of female university student towards abortion.
• H1: There is a significant influence on the perception of female university student towards abortion.

Hypothesis Four

• H0: There is there is no a joint influence of peer group and parenting styles on the perception of female university students towards abortion
• H1: There is there is a joint influence of peer group and parenting styles on the perception of female university students towards abortion

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1.7 Significance of Study

The findings of this study will be of immense significant to the following stake holders in education:

1. To the Parents: The results of this research if published will act as an aid to the guidance of effective parenting skills that will enable parents to adequately deal with conflicts with adolescents when the need arises.
2. The results of this research will be useful in planning and organizing necessary psychological support services for parents and adolescents in the country.
3. The results of this study will also be useful to a number of people namely: Psychologists, Student counsellors, Social Workers, Health Professionals, Sociologists, Psychiatrists, Teachers, and other researchers in this field to help in the mediating process of adolescent conflict with parents.
4. Fellow researchers: The findings could aid other researchers to further evaluate the influence of Gender, Age, Parenting Style and Peer Pressure on perception of female university students towards abortion.
5. The findings will serve as an information bases for Curriculum planners to actually enable them incorporate this aspect of societal issues in teaching and learning in our schools.

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1.8 Scope of Study

The study focuses on the Influence of Peer Pressure and Parenting Styles on Female University Students Perception towards Abortion.

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

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1.10 Definition of Terms

The following terms were operationally defined for the study:

Social factors: This refers to those factors interacting with a person’s social environment that could influence or induce positive or negative behaviour among students at school, home or in the society. In this study these factors include: peer influence, parental influence and home/domestic violence.

Deviance: Deviance is behaving contrary to acceptable norms and expectation of a society.

Peer pressure: This describes the influence exerted by a peer group to make individuals to change their attitudes, values, behaviour in order to conform to group norms.

Home influence: This refers to all forms of frequent slaps, pushes, grabs, or shoves and severe life-threatening assaults witnessed by children (or the ones they are directly involved in), in a domestic environment that could affect a child’s upbringing and emotions.