MARITAL DISRUPTION - THE WELFARE OF THE CHILDREN THEREAFTER IN NIGERIA

Departure from the traditional society is being witnessed in Nigeria and many cultural values and control are being lost. Many marriages are contracted between the individuals as opposed to between families, and so poorly withstand the test of time and stress of modern day living, hence more children witness family disruption than before. One thousand randomly selected State Social Welfare case records were studied in depth and information regarding the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the families, the nature of their problems, welfare status of the children including paternal contribution for their maintenance were extracted, collated and analyzed. Some important variables were also cross-tabulated. Young maternal age was found to statistically influence the type of case/nature of complaint and the living arrangement of the children (p = .001 and p = .00035 respectively). Income level of the mother also affected the type of case/nature of complaint significantly (p = .00001). About 53.6% of the cases were for maintenance and 23.1% for custody. Most of the children were underage; 56.8% of the first born were under 5 years of age. Single custody was commonly practiced, 63.6% of the children lived with their mothers only and 10.2% with their fathers only before intervention, thereafter 16 of those living with their mothers only were transferred to their fathers. Only .09% of the women remarried and about half of these women had children from their previous marriages living with them; some had their new husbands helping with maintenance. Many of the biological fathers were not responsible for the maintenance of their children and the few that were defaulted regularly. The mothers had to seek redress; the steps taken included social welfare intervention (95.5%), police and legal (4%), and family intervention (0.3%). The inadequacy, inappropriateness, and obsolete nature of our social laws were highlighted by this study. Therefore, urgent attempts at revising and reforming them in line with the demands of the society vis-a-vis our level of development and improving standards of living are strongly recommended.