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EDUCATING THE GIRL CHILD IN A POLYGAMOUS FAMILY IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1        Background of the study

 In the context of human society, a family (from latin word familia) is a group of people affiliated by consanguinity (by recognized birth), affinity (by marriage) or co-residence and/or shared consumption (nurture kinship). Members of the immediate family include spouses, parents, brothers, sisters, sons and/or daughters. Members of the extended family may include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces and/or siblings-in-law.In most societies, the family is the principal institution for the socialization of children. As the basic unit for raising children anthropologists generally classify most family organization as multifocal (a mother and her children); conjugal (a husband, his wife) and children also called nuclear family) avuncular (for example, a grandparents, a brother, his sister and her children) or extended parents and children co-reside with other members of one parents family. Sexual relations among the members are regulated by rules concerning incest such as the incest.

Family is used metaphorically to create more inclusive categories such as community nationhood, global village and humanism. Generally is a field which aims to trace family lineages through history. Family is also an important economic unit studied in family economic. One of the primary functions of the family involves providing a framework for the production and reproduction of persons, biologically and/or socially. This can occur through the sharing of materials/substances (such as food), the giving and receiving of care and nurture (nurture kinship) rural rights and obligation and moral and sentimental ties. Thus ones experience of one’s family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family is a “family of orientation”. The family serves to locate children socially and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialization. From the point of view of the parents(s) the family is a family of procreation, the goal of which is to produce and enculturation and socializes children. However, producing children is not the only function of the family in societies with a sexual division of labor, marriage, and the resulting relationship between two people, it is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.

Christopher Harris notes that the western conception of family is ambiguous, and confused with the household, as revealed in the different contexts in which the word is used and so many. There are different types of family units which are monoigamo8us and polygamous are inclusive. Monogamous family is based on legal or social monogamy. In this case, an individual has only one (official) partner during their life’s time or at any one time (serial monogamy). This means that a person may not have several different legal spouses at the same time, as this is usually prohibited by bigamy laws, in jurisdictions that require monogamous marriages.Polygamous family unit is a marriage that includes more than two partners when a man is married to more than one wife at a time, the relationship is called polygamy. Polygamy is the type of marriage system practiced in the traditional Africa society whereby a man takes more than one wife at the same time. It is practiced because of the prestige it accorded a man during