Family Pressure, Peer Influence, and Teenagers Involvement in Prostitution

Abstract

The study investigated ‘Family Pressure, Peer Influence, and Teenager’s Involvement in Prostitution’. The study area was Delta State. The target population for the study was teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18 found in some brothels, on the street at night, and in guest houses involved in prostitution as a way of surviving a hard time. The sample size is 120 teenagers. The questionnaire was developed by the researcher and validated by experts in the field of measurement and evaluation. Both instruments have a reliability of 0.78 and 0.85, respectively. An in-depth interview was conducted with six respondents; this was made possible by the participant observation method adopted by the research. A photograph was taken. A semi-structured interview guide was used for the IDI. The researcher transcribed the data acquired from the in-depth interviews through the use of a recording device, and they were compared with the notes taken by the note-taker during the meetings. Both the transcribed tapes and the field notes were utilized for data analysis. Simple regression was used to test the first two hypotheses, and multiple regression was used to analyzing the last hypothesis, as well as content analysis for the In-depth interview. Findings from the study revealed that peer influences are a major variable that propels teenagers into prostitution, and a lack of economic power has put strains on parents to send their girl child to the city in the name of searching for green pasture, who end up becoming prostitutes. A recommendation was made that parents should take full responsibility for the upbringing of their children and should desist from giving their children economic favors from friends and relatives. In most cases, such children end up becoming prostitutes and armed robbers.