Abstract

Marital satisfaction is essential to promote marital stability but many couples are not satisfying with their marriage. Studies in the past had examined the effects of age, gender, separation, duration of marriage on marital satisfaction, adjustment and quality of marriage in many countries of the world. These studies are foreign. Therefore, the present study investigated socio-demographic factors (age, gender, nature and years of marriage) on marital satisfaction of couples in Ibadan North Local Government Area, Nigeria). Descriptive research design was adopted for the study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select educated 175 couples in Christian centres for the study. Marital Satisfaction Scale (r=.85) was used for data collection and Multiple regression was used to analyze the data. The results showed that socio-demographic factors (age, gender, nature and years of marriage ( adjusted R 2= .048; F 4, 149= 2.889) contributed and accounted for 7.4% contributions. Age (β = .259, P>.05), gender (β = -.088, P>.05), nature of marriage (β = -.186, P<.05) and years of marriage (β = -.133, p>.05). Hence, only nature of marriage significantly and independently and determines marital satisfaction among couples in Ibadan North Local Government Area in the study. It is recommended that couples should encourage intimacy for them to promote marital satisfaction and couples irrespective of age, gender and years of marriage should visit counsellors and counsellors should help couples to promote marital satisfaction.