Suchergebnisse

This study examines whether mother's marital status predicts involvement in a particular type of criminal activity. Data were obtained from a survey of 249 male inmates, and interview with Senior Officers in two prisons in Osun State, Nigeria Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the relative risk of committing a crime against property, crime against persons and victimless crime. The interviews were content analyzed. The majority of the respondents committed crime against property, and 40% were from single mother households. The inmates whose mothers never married, divorced or separated were at a higher risk of committing a crime against property than victimless crime, compared to inmates whose mothers were in a union (RRR 4.45 p<.05). Relative to respondents from two-parent homes, respondents whose mothers were widows were less likely to be involved in crimes against property and persons than victimless crime (RRR 0.19 p<.01). The significant association between mother's single marital status and involvement in crime against property is suggestive of a link with large financial strain. To curb crime against property and persons and victimless crimes in Nigeria, there is need to pay attention to the marital status of mothers and empower women to strengthen the welfare of children in both the intact and disrupted families

One of the major changes in family formation is the increasing tendency for people to enter into co-resident patterning without formalising the union through religious, civil or traditional rites. Despite the implications, this nuptiality behavior which is well documented in the more developed regions, has received negligible scholarly attention in Africa. Using three ranks of DHS surveys (1998-2014) in twelve countries, this study examined the levels, trends, individual and contextual factors associated with consensual union in West Africa. Descriptive results showed a rising trend in consensual union in the sub-region. Multilevel logistic regression analysis suggests that individual-level factors associated with consensual union included education, spousal age gap, second and higher order union, premarital birth, age at first sex, number of sons among others. Contextual predictors were community poverty level, proportion of educated women and proportion of divorced and separated women. Given the health and welfare implications of consensual union, the findings underscore the need for policies and programmatic interventions to protect women in consensual unions, and to extend the benefits of formal marriage to consensual union in case of break up.