An Assessment of the Impact of Parental Separation on Social Attitudes of Secondary Schools’ Adolescents in Ondo State

This study investigated the impact of parental separation on social attitudes of adolescents’ students of secondary school in Ondo State. The study adopted a descriptive research design of the survey method. Two hundred and forty (240) adolescent students were randomly selected from 6 senior secondary schools. One hundred and twenty (120) students each were selected from homes with intact and separated parents respectively. The selected students were the samples used for the study. Two research hypotheses were generated and tested for the study. A self-constructed instrument titled “Parental Separation and Social Attitude of Adolescents Questionnaire” (PSSAAQ) was used to collect data from the respondents for the study. The data collected were analyzed using t-test. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that there was a significant difference in the social attitudes of adolescent students from homes with separated parents and those from homes with intact parents. This implies that the parents have a vital and substantial role to play in the development of the child’s attitudes mainly to avert deviant behaviours. Therefore, social attitude of any child is dependent of parental care. Based on the above findings, some recommendations were made. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n6p32