Influence of the Level of Family Social Support of Student Mothers on the Psychological Wellbeing, Egerton University, Kenya

Abstract

In pursuit of intimate relationships, students in Kenyan Universities end up getting pregnant before completing their undergraduate degree programmes. Upon giving birth, the students have to balance between the roles of motherhood and attend to student obligations. Striking a balance between the dual roles becomes a challenge to majority of the student mothers. The strain involved in balancing the roles results into psychosocial challenges. Some of these challenges include; level of participation in student activities, level of interpersonal relationships, level of family social support and motherhood stigmatization. The purpose of this study was to establish the influence of selected psychosocial challenges and coping strategies on the psychological wellbeing of student mothers among undergraduate students at Egerton University, Kenya. This study was guided by role conflict theory and the strain theory. The study used descriptive research design. The target population of the study was 91 respondents comprising of 82 student mothers, eight student counselors and one Dean of Students.Census sampling method was used to select the entire population. Data was collected using close-ended questionnaire for student mothers and interview schedule for student counselors and the Dean of Students. The instruments were validated by two supervisors and discipline research experts from the Faculty of Education and Community. The reliability analysis was based on a pilot study that was conducted in Maseno University involving eight student mothers. From the pilot study, the study revealed that the overall questionnaire reliability with 43 items was 0.838. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24 was used to analyze data. The study found out that there was statistically significance influence on the level of participation of student mothers in student activities (β=0.217, р <0.05), interpersonal relationships (β=0.188, р <0.05), family social support (β=0.261, р <0.05), coping strategies (β=0.125, р <0.05) and motherhood stigmatization (β= - 0.203, р <0.05) on the psychological wellbeing of student mothers at 5% significance level. The study recommended development of a special counseling program for student mothers on personal, academic, social and psychological issue. Keywords: Interpersonal relationships, Stigmatization, Psychological wellbeing; coping, Strategies and family social support. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-29-06 Publication date: October 31 st 2022