Abstract
The study investigated the correlates of adolescent sexual behaviour in Bassa Education Zone Kogi State and its implication for counseling. Five research questions and three hypotheses were generated to guide the study. The study design was correlation study. The sample consisted of three hundred senior secondary students. The instrument used for the study was questionnaire on adolescent sexual behaviour (ABSQ). The data was analysed using correlational statistics. t- test was used to test hypotheses 0.05 level of significance. The major findings of the study showed that: adolescents were involved in illicit sexual activities. This was found to be due to lack of sexual knowledge of adolescents. Furthermore, it was found that peer pressure was one of the determining factors of adolescent’s sexual behaviour. Sexual education was another determining factor of adolescents’ sexual behaviour. Religious affiliation was found to play a vital role in curbing sexual behaviour among adolescents. It was recommended among others that sex education should be intensified and should start from adolescent’ home to the school.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background of the Study
A child’s education starts from the home. Psychologists agree that the pattern of a person’s character and socialization is laid within the five years of his life. During this period the greater part of the child’s life is spent at home. The home serve as the bedrock of education in every child’s life, because the first interaction start with the immediate environment, such as learning the mother tongue and interacting with the brothers and sisters in the home. The family lays the foundation of education before the child goes to school and the personality that the child takes to school is determined by the home. The father is to provide the necessary tools for the education of the children, while the mother is supposed to supplement the father’s efforts in this regard.
The same thing occurs when the mother is absent and the father is not privileged enough. Supporting this view, Okeke (2000) pointed out that parents are expected to provide for the child the legitimate moral, financial and social needs of the students so as to enable them concentrate in their studies better, provide information about their children to the counselor on health or personal social issues for proper remediation recommendation. Parents are also expected to provide reading materials and encourage their children during holidays to study effectively and make proper use of their leisure time. Any laxity on the part of the parents in providing the above opportunities for their secondary school children may result in their educational backwardness and unwholesome behaviour.
Some children learn a great deal about sexuality from their parents. For the most part, however, they learn, not because their parents set out to teach them, but because they are avid observers of their parents’ behaviours. Much of what they learn concerns the hidden nature of sexuality. As they enter adolescence, young people are especially concerned about their own sexuality, but they are often too embarrassed to ask their parents directly about these “secret” matters. Parents are ambivalent about their children’s developing sexual nature. They often underestimate their children’s involvements in sexual activities, even when their children progress through adolescence, and so they perceive less need to discuss sexuality with them.
Adolescents acquire a wealth of misinformation from each other about sex. They also put pressure on each other to carry out traditional gender roles. Boys encourage other boys to be sexually active even if they are unprepared or uninterested. They must camouflage their inexperience with bravado, which increases misinformation, because they cannot reveal sexual ignorance.
According to advanced learner dictionary revised sixth edition) correlate: – To have a mutual relationship or connection in which one thing affects or depends on another. The results of this experiment do not correlate closely with those of earlier ones. The data do not seem to correlate.
What is known about adolescent sexual behaviour in the teenage year is considered as a function of cohort, gender, and ethnic differences. The adolescent period of exploration is a growth stage which is encumbered with conflicts, consideration and choices.
Behaviour is generally believed to be learned and unlearned. Bos (1994), noted that students can be taught new behaviour. Behaviour is the action or reaction of an object or organism, usually in relation to the environment. Behaviour can be conscious or unconscious, overt or covert, voluntary or involuntary.
Sexual behaviour in the teenage years is considered as a function of cohort, gender, and ethnic differences. Omissions in the research on sexual on sexual behaviour other than intercourse are highlighted. Possible biological, social, and social cognitive processes underlying teenage sexual behaviour are then considered. (American Psychologist, 2010)
Sexual behaviour simply means the way and manner individuals react or conduct themselves towards everything that has to do with sexual intercourse (Nwagbo and Ubachukwu, 2001).
In context behaviour may be defined as a total action of an adolescent in handling their sexual impulses. Sexual behaviour is the result of biological, psychological and social forces. Human sexual activities are shaped by the internal experience of being male and female that is, by a person’s gender identity. Sexual behaviour is one of such situations in which adolescent’s dual membership in the family and peer groups present them with conflicting normative standards.
Since the mid 90s the age of technology has sky rocketed with computers, cell phones, radios, and televisions. People are constantly within immediate and easy access to the media. This persistent bombardment of the media in the everyday lives of today’s society undoubtedly wields numerous, socio- cultural consequences especially upon the youth.
Today’s adolescents grow up in a social environment that is considerably more liberal and permissive in sexual attitudes than that of their parents. The impact of the negative consequences of this situation on the sexual behaviour and sexual health of adolescents can be best understood through research and other observed reports.
(Eze, 2000; in Ogunsanya 2005) A number of studies including those by co relational studies on sexual behaviour during adolescence show that there is a high prevalence of sexual activity among adolescents in Nigeria leading to high rate of teenage pregnancy, school dropout, academic under-achievement, abortions and maternal mortality, as well as infections with sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS. This tends to portray the fact that many adolescents are involved in making self-destructive choices. Many adolescents remain greatly misinformed about sexual relationships and their consequences.
When adolescents cling to their peers, it easily creates a driving force in them to get complete freedom from their parents control over them. In the quest for emancipation, such identification forces the child to stick to suggestions by age mates of the same sex. Pre-marital sex may represent an effort to succumb to peer group pressures. When adolescents who have engaged in sex tell their friends for instance, that sex is fun, those not involved before want to experiment too. School is therefore one place where peer group influence is very strong.
However, focusing on sexual behaviour in relation to school type in their study on sexual behaviour and experience of sexual coercion among secondary school students in three states in the North East Zone, they found that students from boy’s only schools were significantly more likely to have had sexual intercourse (18%) than those from the co-educational (14%) and girls’ only schools (20%).
The major predictors of sexual activity were found to be, type of school, location of the school, sex, age, living arrangement, religion and having a boy/girl friend and how parents relate well with their children as well as with the media influence. A study conducted in 2006 found that adolescents who were more exposed to sexuality in the media were also more likely to engage in sexual activity themselves.
According to Oxford Advance Learner’s Dictionary 6th Edition, as cited in Onwuasoaya (2008), ‘sex is the action of a man inserting his penis into a woman’s vagina, usually leading to the release of semen from penis, as a result of which the woman may become pregnant’. In the same vein, according to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, as cited In Onwuasoaya (2008), behaviour is defined as the way that someone conducts himself. Behaviour can either be good or bad, desirable or undesirable.
Sometimes, peer group values and norms conflict with those of parents. In traditional Nigerian cultures, where the adult society restricts sexual experimentation by youths, the expectation might be that adolescents, in their membership in the peer group, would question the cultural definitions of sexual standards and codes. While in our educational systems the adolescents, are involve in some of the following permissible sexual activities “kissing”, “breast/genital fondling”, “embracing”, “holding hands” and “sexual intercourse” in their mode of dressing and clothing, the adolescents appear to be veering from the past mode of dressing brought first by our tradition and later by colonization. For most adolescents’ way of dressing has departed totally from the past. They dress in clothes that appeal to them but which to adults are weird and embarrassing. The female adolescents mostly dresses half nude; they prefer to wear trousers and skimpy shirts or tee-shirts that reveals their tummy, body hug which shows all the contours in their body frames or mini-skirt with a see-through tops while the boys although still wears shirt and trousers but which are always in various bigger sizes compared to their normal sizes. They also wear low waist trousers. This observed clothing habit is not limited to a specific class of adolescents. It cut-across the entire socio-economic status, irrespective of their educational level and status. Therefore what used to be regarded as fashion which is described to be a period desired appearance is being turned to clothing which is regarded as an established pattern of dressing. This shows that Nigerian adolescents are absorbing foreign culture and they no longer adhere strictly to local cultural regulation concerning sex.
Statement of the Problem
Faulty adolescent sexual behaviour may lead to disaster socially, psychologically, academically or even death. This is even more probable in Nigeria society where little or no attention s given to sex education and the possible problem that may emanate from reckless sexual behaviour among adolescents. Although the victims of such reckless sexual behaviour bear the brunt of their actions, but either directly or indirectly failure and blames lie with those responsible for correcting such recklessness, but failed to do so.
Therefore, the problem of this study is to discuss the correlate of adolescent sexual behavior in Bassa Education Zone, Kogi State. It is in view of this concerns that this study is being carried out to determine the correlate of adolescents sexual behavior
