Rationalized Psycho-Economic Decisions And Parental Attitude To Girl-Child Education

Abstract

The study examined how psycho-economic life circumstance encapsulated in parental attitude has affected the Girl-Child equal access to and participation in education. Using the multi-stage sampling technique, 3756 participants (non-equivalent selection method) from thirty-six states and the Federal Capital City (Abuja) of Nigeria constituted the study sample following the adoption of the descriptive survey research design. The thirty-six States were stratified into two zones (North and southern polarization format) while through an automation technique eight States were picked from the North and only two from the Southern States to make up ten States in all. Through a random table of selection, six local Government Areas each from the ten States were also picked with twelve primary schools each with facilities for Child-Friendly Activities (Unicef-Assisted Schools) compared to the Non-Assisted Category. While educational qualifications of the participants varied widely with a disperse religious inclinations, the age range was between 29 and 63 years and Mean age of 49.71 years (SD=11.32) for both parents and Community Leaders. The age range of the selected pupils was between 11 and 16 years and a Mean age of 12.74 years (SD=2.5) respectively. The PAS-I and II, MAVIPI and the HPI were the research measures utilized for screening and data collection while the simple descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentages were adopted for data quantification. The findings showed that parental attitude to equal access to and the participation of the girl-child to education is still negative and unsupportive. Some 83.3% of the parents preferred to educate the boys rather than the girls as only 29.0% agreed that girls are useful to their family of origin when they are married while 77.1% of the pupils also submitted that her marriage is the most important rather than education. One of such very obvious implications discussed is that if such unsupportive parental attitude continues for a long time, it then means that the future of the Nigerian society would not only be compromised technologically and or otherwise, but that the few girls who are privileged to go to school would attribute their providence only to fate rather than their skills.

African Journal of Cross-Cultural psychology and sport facilitation (AJCPSF) Vol. 8 2006: pp. 55-70