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Attitude Of Mother-in-law Towards Daughter-in-law As A Determinant Factor In Marital Stability In Some Selected Families
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Marriage
is a choice. That may not be a definition of marriage, but that is
nevertheless a fact of marriage (Warren, 1990). “You don’t marry a
person, you marry a familyâ€. So goes the conventional folk wisdom neatly
summing up a fact of life. The institutions of marriage and family are
inevitably intertwined. When two people choose to get married, they are
also choosing the integration of two families (Lau, 2005).
Sociologically, that is what a marriage is about: the integration of twp
families. After marriage, her family and his family will likely come to
be considered jointly as “our folksâ€. That is the intended meaning of
marriage. In practical terms, a brother-in-law is treated as a brother, a
sister-in-law is treated as a sister, and a mother-in-law is treated as
one’s own mother (Byng-Hall, 1980).
The US Bureau of the Census
(1986:116) defines the term family as “a group of two persons or more
(one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or
adoption, and residing together. Most of us live out a large share of
our lives in some form of family or another. We can easily see that
family cannot be ignored if we want to understand the societal patterns
and processes all around us. This is because the social relationships
called family is such an important part of the society. In fact no
society has existed without some sort of social arrangements that may be
labelled kinship or family.
Family relationships are never fixed;
they change as the self and the significance of other family members
grow older, and as the changing society influences their respective
lives (Riley, 1983). Family experts report that in reality the most
difficult relationship is the one between the mother-in-law and her
daughter-in-law. Conflicts between wives and their mothers-in-law do not
just happen. They need an arena, just as germs and viruses need an
environment to breed (Lau, 2005). There must first be a common area in
which both the wife and her mother-in-law are in constant contact. If
the wife and her mother-in-law do not meet each other at all and each of
them just lives her own life, there would, in theory, be no problem at
all between them, because there is no contact. No contact, no conflict.
It’s as simple as that. It is like saying if there were no marriages,
there would be no divorces (Philips, 1995).
When you play badminton
or tennis, there is hardly any chance of you crashing into your opponent
unless you are playing like a chimpanzee. This is because each of you
has your own court. When you play a game like squash, however, you have
to be very careful not to crash into your opponent, or smash his head
with your racquet (Lau, 2005). The interaction between the wife and her
mother-in-law is like the game of squash, where there are lots of
opportunities for both players to be in contact with and crash into each
other (Silverstein, 1992).
Interpersonal communication is an
integral part of human experience. Moreover, our interpersonal skills
are highly relevant to adjustment, because they can be critical to our
happiness and success in life. There is a need to be aware that
communication can be effective or ineffective depending on what
transpires between the speaker and the hearer and care should be taken
not be an ineffective communication (Byng-Hall, 1980).
Communication
can be defined as the process of sending and receiving messages that
have meaning. Berlo (1960) has divided the interpersonal communication
process into four basic components: the source of the message, the
message itself, the channel in which the message is sent and the
receiver of the message.
The source is the person who initiates, or
sends the message. The message is the information or meaning that is
transmitted from one person to another. The channel refers to the medium
through which the message reaches the receiver and the receiver is the
person to whom the message is targeted.
Communication is more
effective and less problematic when people have similar frames of
reference (Clark, 1985). Communication with others- friends, lovers,
parents, spouses, children, employers, in-laws- is such an essential and
common place aspect of our lives that it’s hard to overstate the
importance of being able to communicate effectively. Moreover, many of
life’s satisfactions and frustrations and heartaches as well hinge on
our ability to communicate effectively with others. For examples,
research has shown that married couples who perceive themselves as
effective communicators are more likely to be happily, rather than
unhappily married (Yelsma, 1984). Conversely, poor communication is
reported to be the most common problem among couples who seek marriage
counselling (Beck & Jones, 1973).
Communication is effective when
the message we intend to convey is the message that is actually
received. Therefore, it entails both the accurate transmission of a
message and the accurate reception of a message (Hahn, 2000).
A
communication barrier is anything in the communication process that
inhibits or blocks the accurate transmission and reception of messages.
Barriers to effective communication can reside in the source, the
receiver or sometimes in both. Common barriers to effective
communication include defensiveness, carelessness, self-preoccupation,
collusion and instigation of unnecessary conflict.
The most basic
barrier to effective communication is defensiveness-an excessive concern
with protecting oneself from being hurt. We are prone to react
defensively when we feel threatened (Gibb, 1961). When a person
consistently instigates unnecessary conflict with others, this
contentiousness sets up barriers to effective communication. Such
behaviours come in a variety of forms (Nye, 1973). Some people tend to
deliberately annoy and provoke others to get a “rise†out of them.
When
intergenerational conflicts occur, it typically involves the wife and
her mother-in-law. In fact, in-law trouble has been characterized as a
“female problemâ€, perhaps because women have traditionally shouldered
the responsibility for maintaining kinship ties (Marotz-Baden &
Cowan, 1987). Fischer (1983) found that wives tend to turn to their own
mothers for help after giving birth. Yet they may regard their
mother-in-law’s concern over her new grandchild as “interferenceâ€.
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This study investigated the influence of communication on attitude towards mother-in-law among female married adults in Lagos Metropolis.In carrying out the study, four null hypotheses were postulated to provide direction. The study consisted of one hundred randomly selected samples. The instrument used for data collection was a self-designed questionnaire by the researcher of a 4 point Likert format. Both one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Independent t-test Statistical Techniques were us ... Continue reading---
