CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of study

According to the United States Census Bureau (2002), women's participation in the labor force has consistently climbed from 43% in 1970 to 60% in 2001. Income, without a question, plays a significant role in establishing a healthy and well-balanced family. However, as a result of the current economic downturn, more women than ever before are working outside the home. The surge of women into employment outside the home began in the 1950s, according to Samuelson (1997). This is especially true in Nigeria, where the husband's single earnings, which might have supported the family in the 1950s and allowed for a full-time housewife, are no longer the case, resulting in the two-earner family phenomenon. This is a circumstance that has the potential to jeopardize the traditional family structure, in which the woman is the full-time caregiver at home. As a result, developing efficient coping techniques becomes critical for the working mother. Coping skills or mechanisms, a behavioral strategy used to overcome the disadvantages of a disability (without necessarily curing the fundamental problem), are the sum of a person's responses to stress or big problems, such as how to balance domestic and job responsibilities. In order to alleviate stress, the coping technique can be unconscious, learnt, or consciously mastered. Women have had to come up with many alternate means of running their day-to-day operations as successfully as possible because of the issue posed by juggling tasks. Moen (1992) describes the work-home issue as "not only hurting women and their families, but also constituting a societal dilemma for the nation." She acknowledges that a woman's role is evolving beyond that of a wife and mother, as she now works outside the home. It has been highlighted that women continue to care for their homes and work in what has been dubbed the "second shift" by some (Artis & Pavalko,2003; Hochschild, 1989). Despite the fact that more women are working outside the home nowadays, and that, as a result of changing cultural norms, more men are equally involved in child care and domestic activities (particularly among the educated), women still shoulder the majority of the obligations (Hochschild, 1989; Espirit Drago (2005) also points out that working mothers are disadvantaged by inequity in the sharing of responsibilities.

1.2 Statement of problem

To support the two-earner income family that is the norm today, women must work outside the home. Unfortunately, many employers are unsupportive of working mothers' efforts to establish a balance between their home and work responsibilities. Failure to develop effective coping skills can lead to the breakdown of personal health, the family unit, and marriages, as well as the birth of socially maladjusted children. It is vital for working mother employees to acquire coping mechanisms in order to avoid a shortage of time and an inability to successfully combine duties and roles, both of which might impair duty distribution between home and work. At the very least, the exhausted worker must attend to her conjugal, maternal, and household responsibilities. How is multitasking accomplished? As an adult, the working mother must be able to strike a balance between the demands of full-time employment and her household responsibilities. Women are pressured, anxious, weary, overworked, and sleep too little as a result of balancing tasks while attempting to parent responsibly. Women will need to learn suitable coping skills as long as they are expected to effectively distribute their job and home tasks, and there are mitigating variables.

1.3 Objective of study

The following are primary objectives of this study

1. To examine the coping strategies of working mothers

2. To determine the effect of their jobs on the working mother’s psyche 

3. To determine the effect of the absence of the mother on the family structure

1.4 Research question

1. What are the coping strategies of working mothers?

2. What is the effect of their jobs on the psyche of working mothers?

3. What is the effect of the absence of the mother on the family structure?

1.5 Significance of study

Working mothers, without a doubt, require effective coping methods to balance the responsibilities of home and work. Alternative employment arrangements must be seriously considered by the Nigerian government and employers. Employers should look into various options such as on-site child care, including employer-sponsored and subsidized child care, working from home, and posting working mothers close to their homes. A persistent appeal for a domestic revolution in sex roles at home, with more enlightened views, as well as the government's construction of more respectable and inexpensive child care facilities, among other things, should be made.

1.6 Scope of study

This study focuses on examining the coping strategies of working mothers. Also, to determine the effect of their jobs on the working mother’s psyche. Lastly, to determine the effect of the absence of the mother on the family structure. This study is limited to working mothers in Abuja.

1.7 Limitation of study

Finance,inadequate materials and time constraint were the challenges the researchers encountered during the course of the study.

1.8 Definition of terms

Coping Strategies: Coping strategies are the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that you use to adjust to the changes that occur in your life.

Working Mother: This refers to women who are mothers and who work outside the home for income in addition to the work they perform at home in raising their children.

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