On an article titled “help for children of divorceâ€, written in June (1995) edition of Awake magazine; it was pointed out that older children handle divorce little than youngerones. When adolescents witness their parents’ divorce, they may suffer a deep disillusionment that bitters their view of marriage and other institutions such as school.Some conclude that all relationship is unreliable, deemed to unravel someday in betrayal and infidelity. Some teenagers will go to the extremes when their parents’ divorce. Some turn to drugs, some descend to sexual promiscuity, some run away from home, and others turn tocriminal act. In analyzing the effects of broken homes, Donil (1993) in the article “Socio-legal consequences for child abuse,†posited that the divorce of child’s parents and the broken homes environments, are contributing factor in the problem of child abuse and neglect. A child may be emotionally abused by the mere fact of the divorce and may becomeneglected due to diminished parental care. All these usually affect the child adversely throughout his childhood or even beyond. He concluded by saying that some cruel step mothers would not hesitate to abuse children of the estranged or former wife.
In accessing the social consequences of family instability, some have compared the behaviour of children from intact homes. In a study in Awake magazine April (1994), edition titled “Help for children of divorceâ€, children of divorce were said to have high rate of delinquency and anti-social behaviours than those children from intact families, and therate of admission of children of divorce to psychiatric hospitals may be twice as high as for children of intact families. It can therefore be asserted that divorce is the most leading cause of childhood depression.
Similarly, a national youth survey that was carried out in the United States ofAmerica in (1992), found out that youths from unstable families were more delinquent or had more delinquent acts within the society than youths from intact homes, it was also found that more than half of the offenders in that survey were living with a single parent.
They further said that family as a representative of the larger society is the place where the child learns the real behaviour patterns, values, attitudes, norms etc. of the society. an form of disorder in the family will obstruct a child from gaining these advantages. The relevance of all these studies lies in the ability to direct our mind to thevarious factors which causes and affects family instability.
2.8 Empirical Justification
Literatures have shown that family disintegration could cause involvement in deviant acts (McLanahan, 98O, Emery, 1988). Zill and Schoenborn (1998), posited that children who live with only one parent, usually their mothers are more likely to suffer moreemotional, behavioural and intellectual problems resulting in a higher risk of involving in ,e acts. This is because single parent cannot capture the complexity of parentalrsponsibilities. In support, Demo (1992), Popenoe (1996), I-Ietherington and Kelly (2002), andRebello (2002) pointed that disintegrated families are less effective in capturing the multidimensionality of parental responsibilities. Also, the studies of Paschal et.al (2003), Pearce and Haynie (2004), Eitle (2006), Zimmermann (2006), Changizi (2007) and Dehghani et.al (2008) have shown that disintegrated family or absence of one parent in the family is significantly associated with adolescents’ drug use and alcohol consumption.
Studies have shown that inadequate and lack of parental supervisions and monitoring is one of the strong predictive factors of adolescents’ involvement in deviant acts (Marshall and Ribeaud, 2003). Brendgen, et.al (2000), Paschal, eta! (2003) and Meidrurn, et. al (2009) shown that poor parental supervision and monitoring may lead the adolescents to affiliate with deviant peers, which could predict adolescents’ involvement in deviance.Laird et al (2003), Queen (2004), and Heilbrum et al (2005) found similar results in their empirical studies. In a study conducted by Flewelling and Baunman (1990), Blum et al (2000), Oman and Mcleroy (2002), Santelling, et.al (2008), adolescents who lack effective parental monitoring and supervisions are more likely to exhibit anti-social and risky behaviour such as drug addiction, truancy, prostitution, stealing, robbery, violent orientations and so on. Similarly, Allen, eta! (2003) argued that the level of parental monitoring of adolescents’ behavours would determine, to a great extent the level of their involvement in substance use. Adolescents who are less supervised are more likely to be found on the streets, and possibly associate with anti-social peers (WHO, 1993; and Aderinto, 2007). This may mark the onset of substance abuse among the adolescents. While, Rai (2003), Soenens, et. al (2006), Clark, et.al (2008) opined that there is a connection between parental knowledge of a child’s whereabouts and adolescents’ problem behaviour. In the submission of Urberg, et.al (2005), parental support has been associated with decreased alcohol consumption.
