EARLY MARRIAGE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON MARITAL INSTABILITY IN UVWIE LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF DELTA STATE (GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING PROJECT TOPICS AND MATERIALS)
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
Background to the Study
The concept of marriage is as old as man. Christians believe that God instituted the first marriage. This is recorded by Genesis 2:24 saying “therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh”.
Generally marriage is a universal concept with principles and practices that vary from one community to the other.
Ofoegbu (2002) defined marriage simply as an arrangement of social structure which results in the establishment of a relationship of a legal customary or religious bound between a man and his wife for the propagation of the family root through procreation and the sharing of various degree of other acceptable relationship norms.
Uwe (2000) noted that God designed the relationship between sex to complement each other and give to the other what each lacks.
Okorodudu (2010) defined the concept of marriage as a social group and a social system which has certain structure that serve various functions in society right from the origin of the world. He also stated that psychologist and psychiatrist believed that marriage is a complex social system that thrive to satisfy huge emotional and sexual needs of the couples which is the aspect of the id which Freud talked about in the human personality structure.
According to Okorodudu and Okorodudu (2004) “right from the time of creation, marriage is regarded as the oldest institution on earth. God ordained marriage, it is the union of man and woman who have agreed to come together to build a family, marriage served the three pronged utility of addressing the psychological, physiological and social needs of man. These three aspects of marriage are geared towards the sexual survival and emotional instincts which form integrated part of nature and indeed their organisms”.
