Families and Households

Parsons (1955) - roles

Parsons (1955) - roles

Instrumental role - the husband works to provide financially (breadwinner).

Expressive role - the wife’s role is geared towards the primary socialisation of the children meeting the family’s emotional needs.

Based on biological differences.

Bott (1957)

Segregated conjugal roles - male breadwinner and female homemaker/carer. Leisure activities also tend to be separate.

Joint conjugal roles - couple shares tasks such as housework and childcare. Leisure time spent together.

Young and Willmott - segregated conjugal roles

Identified a pattern of segregated conjugal roles in their study of traditional w/c extended families in 1950s London.

Men = breadwinners, leisure time with workmates in pubs and working men’s clubs. Women = full time housewives with sole responsibility for housework and childcare. Leisure time (limited) spent with female kin.

Young and Willmott (1973) - symmetrical family

March of progress view - family life gradually improving for all its members, becoming more equal and democratic.

• women now go out to work (usually part time)

• men now help with housework and childcare

• couples now spend leisure time together

Symmetrical family more common amongst younger families, those who are geographically and socially isolated and the more affluent.

Why is there a rise of the symmetrical nuclear family? (Young and Willmott, 1973)

• Changes in position of women - married women going to work

• Geographical mobility - more couples moving away from communities they grew up in

• New technology and labour saving devices

• Higher standards of living

Reasons interlinked e.g. women going to work means 2 wage earners leading to higher standard of living and being able to afford labour saving devices.

Oakley (1974)

Found only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework and only 25% in childcare.

Most couples defined father’s role in childcare as ‘taking an interest’. A good father was one that would play with children in the evenings and ‘take them off her hands’. Mothers left with less rewarding aspects of childcare.

Boulton (1983)

Fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare. Young and Willmott exaggerated men’s contribution by looking at the tasks rather than responsibilities.

A mother was almost always responsible for the child’s security and wellbeing whereas fathers helped with specific tasks.

Warde and Hetherington (1993)

Sex typing of domestic tasks remained strong. e.g. wives were 30x more likely to be the last person to have done the washing, men were 4x more likely to be the last person to have washed the car.

Men would only carry out routine ‘female’ tasks when their partners were not around to do it for them.

Sullivan (2000)

Analysis of nationally representative data collected in 1975, 1987 and 1997 found a trend towards women doing a smaller share of the domestic work and men doing more. e.g. both full time 1975 - women = 68% 1997 women = 60%.

Ferri and Smith (1996)

Found that fathers took responsibility for childcare in fewer than 4% of families.

Dex and Ward (2007)

High levels of involvement with their three-year-olds (78% played with their children), only 1% took the main responsibility of caring for their sick child.

Braun, Vincent, and Ball (2011)

in only 3/70 families studied the father was the main carer. Helping with childcare was more about their relationship with their partner than responsibility towards their children.

Most fathers had a ‘provider ideology’.

Duncombe and Marsden (1995)

Women have to perform a triple shift - emotion work, paid work, and housework.

Emotion work - responsible for managing emotions of family members e.g. squabbles between siblings.

Southerton (2011)

Responsibility of managing family’s quality time together falls to the mother.

More difficult in today’s modern society as people’s time being more fragmented and ‘de-routinised’.

Cultural explanation of inequality (Crompton and Lyonette, 2008)

Division of labour is determined by patriarchal norms and values that shape the gender roles in our culture.

Material explanation of inequality (Crompton and Lyonette, 2008)

The fact that women generally earn less than men means that it is economically rational for women to do more of the housework and childcare.

Cultural explanation - Gershuny (1994)

Found that couples whose parents had more equal relationship are more likely to do the housework equally themselves.

Cultural explanation - Man Yee Kan (2001)

Found that younger men do more domestic work. Most claimed to do more than their fathers and women less than their mothers.

Cultural explanation - Dunne (1999)

Found that lesbian couples had more symmetrical relationships due to the absence of traditional heterosexual ‘gender scripts’.

Material explanation - Kan

Found that for every £10,000 more a year a woman earns, she does 2 hours less of housework a week

Material explanation - Arber and Ginn (1995)

Found that better paid m/c women were more able to buy in commercially produced products and services such as labour saving devices, ready meals, domestic help and childcare.

Material explanation - Ramos (2003)

Found that where a woman was the full time breadwinner and the man is unemployed, he does as much housework as she does.

Material explanation - Sullivan

Shows that working full time rather than part time makes the biggest difference in terms of how much domestic work each partner does.

Barrett and McIntosh (1991)

• Men gain far more from women’s domestic work than they give back in financial support

• The financial support that men give back to their wives is often unpredictable and comes with strings attached

• Men usually make decisions about spending on important items

Pahl and Vogler (1993)

The allowance system - where men give their wives an allowance out of which to budget to meet the family’s needs, with the main retaining any surplus for himself.

Pooling - where both partners have access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure (men usually make major financial decisions)

Hardill (1997)

Study of 30 dual-career professional couples found that the important decisions were either taken by the man alone or jointly and that his career normally took priority when deciding whether to move house.

Edgell (1980)

Very important decisions - e.g. change of job or moving house - taken by husbands alone or jointly but husband having final say.

Important decisions - e.g. children’s education or holiday destination - taken jointly, seldom by wife alone.

Less important decisions - e.g. home decor, food items - taken by wife usually.

Gershuny (2000)

By 1995, 70% of couples said they had an equal say in decisions. Women in high earning positions more likely to have an equal say.

Smart (2007)

Found that some gay men and lesbians attached no importance to who who controlled their money and were happy to leave it to their partners.

Less control in same-sex relationships - without ‘historical, gendered, heterosexual baggage’

Weeks et al (2001)

Couples pooled some money for household spending with separate accounts for personal spending - ‘co-independence’

Domestic violence

Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. - The Home Office (2013)

Coleman et al (2007)

Women were more likely than men to