PARENTAL INFLUENCE AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS AS CORRELATES OF PERSONALITY ADJUSTMENT AMONG ADOLESCENTS
ABSTRACT
The study examined the effect of parental socio-economic status on students’ personality adjustment at the secondary level in selected public secondary schools in Shomolu Local Government Area of Lagos State. Also, this study reviewed some relevant and related literatures under sub-headings. The descriptive research survey was applied in this study for the assessment of the opinions of the selected respondents for this study, with the use of the questionnaire and the sampling technique. A total of 200 respondents were sampled for this study. Five null hypotheses were formulated and tested, with the application of Pearson Product Moment Correlation and the t-test tools at 0.05 level of significance. At the end of the testing of hypotheses, the following results emerged: there is a significant relationship between parental socio-economic status and students’ personality adjustment, there is a significant relationship between broken homes and adolescents’ personality adjustment, there is a significant gender difference between the performance adjustment of adolescents in intact homes and those in divorced homes, there is a significant influence of parental discipline on adolescents’ personality adjustment in schools, and there is a significant influence of family size on adolescents’ personality adjustment in schools. Based on the conclusions reached in this study, the following recommendations were made: parents should ensure that they give every support that their children and wards need in their academic endeavour and social adjustment. Parents should endeavour to have the number of children that will not give them much stress in training or bringing them up. At this present period where the economy has nose-dived, parents should be aware of this down-ward economic trend, and therefore be conscious of the number of children they rear in their families. This is because, too many children will give much stress to the parents and this can affect their economic well-being and the education of the child.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study  Â
Parents are the greatest single influence on their children’s development in two indisputable ways. Parents act as socializing agents in providing goals and value system from which the child develops various patterns of behaviours. In some situations, parents adopt care-free attitude towards the learning of their children, even their social orientation, and this has in many instances, caused the low academic performance of children even maladaptive behaviours in their immediate society (Hake, 2009).
According to Ndubuisi (2005) there is a positive correlation between parental attitude and children’s social orientation and academic achievement. Ndubuisi (2005) is of the opinion that parents’ dimensions of value placement on their children’s well-being or otherwise, significantly affects the child’s positive or negative adaptation to his/her society and even the way he/she carries out his/her academic work in school.
