TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title page                                                                                                    i

Certification                                                                                                ii

Dedication                                                                                                  iii

Acknowledgement                                                                                      iv

Table of contents                                                                                        v

List of tables                                                                                               vii

List of appendices                                                                                                viii

Abstract                                                                                                      ix

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION                                                      1

Statement of the problem                                                                                     9

Purpose of the study                                                                                  10

Operational definition of terms                                                                            10

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW                                         12

Theoretical review                                                                                      12

Empirical review                                                                                        18

Summary of literature reviewed                                                                 29

Hypothesis                                                                                                           32

CHAPTER THREE: METHOD                                                              33

Participants                                                                                                          33

Instrument                                                                                                  33

Procedure                                                                                                   37

Design/statistics                                                                                          38

CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS                                                                 39

CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION                                                             44     

Implications of the study                                                                                     47

Limitations of the study, and suggestion for further studies                       47

Summary and conclusion                                                                           48

REFERENCES                                                                                         51

APPENDICES                                                                                           59

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1:      Table of the Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient carried out to compare the individuals with high self esteem and those with    low self esteem towards child adoption.                                  39

Table 2:      The table shows the correlation of scores of participants with      locus of control on attitude towards child adoption.               40

Table 3:      Shows the scores correlation coefficient of males and females attitude towards child adoption.                                             41

Table 4:      Summary of correlation coefficient table carried out to correlate the attitude towards child adoption of the individuals with internal and   external locus of control, high and low self esteem, and male and   female gender.                                                                           42

LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix A:        Introduction page                                                                    59

Appendix B:        Demographic information                                              60

Appendix C:        Locus of control scale                                                    61

Appendix D:        Scale measuring attitude towards child adoption             62

Appendix E:        Socio-demographic characteristics of respondents            64

Appendix F:        Item statistical analysis                                                  65

ABSTRACT

This study examined the relationship between locus of control, self-esteem, gender and attitude towards child adoption in Nsukka, Enugu State. Three hundred and three (303 people) of Nsukka local Government workers participated in the study (150 males and 153 females). Their ages range between 21years and 55 years with a mean age of (38.90) years. Three instruments were used for data collection namely: self-esteem scale developed by Rosenberg (1965), locus of control scale developed by Terry (2003) and Attitude to child adoption questionnaire. All scales used were psychometrically sound.  Result of the Pearson’s product correlational analysis indicated that individuals with high self-esteem expressed more positive attitude towards child adoption than those with low self-esteem (r = 35.7; P<.005) for high self-esteem while calculated correlation coefficient for low self-esteem is (r – 0.35; P<.005). Results also showed that locus of control and gender had no or little correlation coefficient towards child adoption as calculated r is (– 1.1; P< .005) for locus of control while calculated coefficient for males and females gender is (r – 100.8) and (r – 98.3) respectively. The findings of the study suggested that personalities are important factor in people’s attitudes towards child adoption. It is suggested in the study that researchers who are interested in changing people’s attitude towards child adoption policy need to consider personality factors first and foremost. Finally, the above results have implication for social policy and social work practice in Nsukka community, in Enugu State.     

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

The importance attached to children in most societies has made imperative that every home/family desire to have children. Besides, companionship derived from marriage, children foster love and happiness among married couples. Thus, the joy and stability that children bring to families cannot be over emphasized. This may be why couples who are unable, because of one reason or the other to bear children go for adoption.

However, adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the role of parenting for another child and in so doing permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities, along with filiations, from the biological parents or parent (Pertman, 2000). According to Logan (1996) adoption is defined as act of transferring parental rights and duties to someone other than the adopted person’s biological parents. Adoption, according to Wikipedia (2013) is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities, along with filiations, from the biological parent or parents. Unlike, guardianship or other systems design for the care of the young, adoption is intended to effect a permanent change in status of the child and as such requires societal recognition, either through legal or religious sanction.

Nevertheless, adoption practice has been in existence in an informal form prior to colonial era. The system then could be contemporarily described as fosterage. This is a situation where children could be fostered out to kin members for variety of reasons. Such reasons could be because of infertility of the fostered parent(s). Meanwhile, contemporary adoption practices can be open or closed (Logan, 1996). Open adoption, allows identifying information to be communicated between adoptive and biological parents and, perhaps interaction between kin and the adopted child. While close adoption (i.e. confidential or secret adoption) seal all identifying information, maintaining it as secret and preventing disclosure of the adoptive parents, biological kins and adoptees (Logan, 1996).

Bloodhound Team (2004) defined adoption as the legal and emotional acceptance into a parent family of a child not born to the parents but have the parents name and the same legal rights as a child by birth. By this definition adopted child assumes the identity of the adoptive parents as prescribe by the law which permit inheritance right to be transferred to the adopted child. Adopted children contemporary are being seen as orphans who have no birth rights, homeless and hopeless or any representation of such in the society. Nydam (1992) corroborates the abandoned posture of adopted child by asserting that adoption is the first of all an experience of rejection of not fitting into this world, where a child is being dismissed, separated from origins and denied the basic rights of birth, and offered up to unasked adoptive parents. He asserted that adoption should be given a new status and a new place in the world of rejection.However, in African culture a child is being considered as central to the sustenance and continual existence of happy home. In African continent adoption is seen as an arrangement by which a child whose biological parents are unable to care for is being adopted and given the same legal and social status as though he/she were the biological child of the adoptive families. For instance in some part of South Africa, the exchange of female relatives from one family to another, for marriage is meant to create enduring connections and social solidarity among families and lineages, e.g. among the Mbuti people in South Africa, sisters are being exchange for marriage. In that part of African, adoption is not seen as a means of filling the gap created in the home as a result of childlessness, but a process to solidified a close family relationship between two families (Anderson, 2012).