BIRTH ORDER AND MARITAL ADJUSTMENT AMONG MARRIED COUPLES IN RIVERS STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

This study investigated birth order and marital adjustment among married couples inRivers State. Ex-post facto research design was used for the study. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. A sample of 888 married men and women were drawn from the population of 316,276 through simple random sampling technique. Birth Order Questionnaire (BOQ) and Marital Adjustment Scale (MAS) were used for data collection. The face, content and construct validities of BOQ and MAS were established. The reliability of BOQ was determined through Cronbach alpha to be0.81 while the coefficient of BOQwas 0.74 and was determined through test-retest method using Pearson Product Moment. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions whileOne Way Analysis of Variance was used to test the hypotheses. Results showed that; birth orders do not significantly influence marital adjustment among married men and women. Based on the findings, it was recommendation among others that marriage counselors should in their sessions lay emphasis on teachings that promote emotion regulation skills such as tolerance, patience, feelings of others and self-regulation that can result in improvement of family life as well as lead to psychological health both for the family and society.