Abstract

Marriage is the institution of love and affection expressed between two people, when marriage is strong, stable and bless with children such couples will be able to give their children sound education. However, the researcher seeks to find out the impact of marital unpredictability on students’ academic achievement as viewed by secondary school students in Okene LGA. Descriptive design was adopted. Multi-stage sampling technique was adopted and 200 respondents participated. “Impact of Marital unpredictability on Students’ Academic Performance Questionnaire (IMUSAPQ)”was the main instrument employed in the study. It has sections A and B. Section A was used to collect demographic information on the respondents while section B contains items on the impact of marital unpredictability on student’ academic achievement. Percentage was used to present the demographic data while the hypotheses were analyzed using t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at 0.05 level of significance. Findings shows that marital unpredictability make student perform woefully in examinations, hinder students’ response to questions in class and can also affect students’ participation in aptitude test. The study also shows no significant difference in students’ view on the impact of marital unpredictability on academic achievement in Okene LGA based on gender and religion. On the other hand, there is significant difference in students’ view of impact of marital unpredictability on students’ academic achievement in Okene LGA based on age. Recommendations were made based on the findings: that Seminars and conferences be organized for married adults in other to enlighten them on some of the challenges faced by married couples. Couples should also go for pre-marital counselling programmes handled and coordinated by professional marriage counsellors, married adults should be encouraged to understand themselves and styles used in communicating to each other. Religious leaders should encourage the married adults by teaching them the tenet of their religion. All these will foster better marital life and well-being of the children.