THE INFLUENCE OF FAMILY ENVIRONMENT ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL BEING AMONG MARRIED WOMEN IN LAFIA METROPOLIS

Background to the Study

Psychological well-being is a dynamic concept, related with individual feeling about his/her day to day life experiences. It is described as a combination of some positive affective states like pleasure, happiness and functioning with optimal effectiveness in personal and social life. Psychological well-being refers as positive elements of mental health that characterized a person’s feelings about life and his ability to function actively with optimal result (Keys &Annas, 2009). According to Diener, Oishi and Lucas (2003) “it is ones cognitive and emotional evaluation of life. This evaluation is based on individual’s emotional reaction to incident, mood and meaning of life. It is affected by person life events, goals, perceived social support, and personality traits.” This construct is very important for good life, especially for older peoples.
The importance of family function and its effect on health is so clear and noticeable. In many countries, family nursing is used to promote the level of health. Family nursing consists of nurses and families working together to ensure the success of the family and its members in adapting to response to health and illness. Married women must be knowledgeable about family function to help the family cope up with health problems (Kaakinen et al 2006). Women play a key role in enhancement of family function.

A substantial number of studies suggest that marriage provides psychological benefits for individuals. However, it is less known if the beneficial effects of marriage on psychological wellbeing vary by motherhood status prior to marriage. Research on marriage and psychological well-being consistently reports that, on average, married individuals tend to enjoy higher levels of psychological well-being compared to those unmarried, pointing to the positive effects of sharing economic resources and emotional support with their spouses (Kim and McKenry, 2002)
While the overall association between marriage and psychological well-being is well established, relatively few studies have examined how this association varies by motherhood status. Those that have investigated this issue suggest that the benefits of marriage are no greater for mothers than they are for childless women.

Thus, it is perhaps not surprising that the spousal relationship is strongly associated with well-being. Research on marriage and mental health has demonstrated that the impact of marriage on well-being is highly dependent on the quality of the marital relationship (Umberson et al. 2013). In particular, marital dissatisfaction is detrimental for psychological well-being (Proulx et al. 2007; Umberson et al. 2013). Given the primacy of the spousal relationship, we expected that spousal tension would be more strongly associated with depressive symptoms compared to tension with married women.

In sum, there are good reasons to believe that the benefits of marriage and motherhood are synergistic, such that marriage brings greater increases in psychological well-being for single mothers than for childless women. Adopting this perspective, we expect that marriage is associated with higher income and increased emotional support and thus it should be associated with increased well-being especially for single mothers.