Feminism - are couples becoming more equal?

p168-70

CRITICISM of march of progress view (Young and Wilmott)

Oakley (1974)

• Claim that family now symmetrical exaggerated

• ‘Helping’ in the house at least once a week could be taking the children for a walk once or making breakfast once, which isn’t convincing evidence of symmetry

Oakley (1974) - husband’s role in housework and childcare

• 15% of husbands had high participation in housework

• 25% of husbands had high participation in childcare, and of this only the ‘fun’ bits

  • Leaves mothers with no rewards of childcare and more time for housework

• Couples defined the fathers role was defined as ‘taking an interest’

Boulton (1983) - responsibility taken for children

• Claimed Y&W exaggerated their claims of a ‘march of progress’ as they looked at tasks instead of responsibilities.

• Said that fathers helped with specific tasks while the mother was responsible for the child’s security and wellbeing.

• Found that <20% of husbands played a major role in childcare.

Ferri and Smith 1996 - responsibility taken for children

• Fathers did the childcare in less than 4% of families

Dex and Ward (2007) - responsibility taken for children

• 78% of fathers played with their children

• <1% took the responsibility of caring for a sick child

Braun, Vincent and Ball - responsibility taken for children

• 3/70 families had a father as their main carer

• Most fathers viewed caring for the children as placating their spouse instead of actually caring about the children

Ward & Hetherington (1993) - sex-typing of domestic tasks

• Sex-typing of domestic tasks still strong

  • Wives 30x more likely to have been the last person to do the washing

  • Husbands 4x more likely to have been the last person to wash the car

• Men only did routine ‘female’ tasks when their partners were unable to do them

• Younger men - less of an assumption that women should do the housework

  • More likely to think they were doing less of the housework than their fair share

British Social Attitudes Survey (2013) - data to support idea of dual burden

• Little idea of a ‘new man’ who does an equal share of the housework and childcare shown in data

• Men do half hours of housework/caring even though women also working

• Women not only doing as much housework and childcare as before, but also doing paid work

• Average hours spent doing housework per week

  • Men: 8

  • Women: 13

• Average hours spent caring for family members per week

  • Men: 10

  • Women: 23

• 60% of women felt division of labour unjust as doing more than fair share

• Gender division of tasks (same pattern as 1994)

  • Men: small repairs around house

  • Women: laundry, caring, shopping, cleaning, cooking

ISSUES with BSA (2013) data

Allan (1985)

• Doesn’t show qualitative differences in tasks such as intrinsic satisfaction, difficulty, discomfort and skill required

• Women’s tasks less intrinsically satisfying

Hochschild (2013) - emotion work

• Women required to take responsibility for other family members

  • E.g. ‘emotion work’ - emotions/feelings, sibling squabbles, keeping everyone happy, controlling their own emotions

Duncombe and Marsden (1995) - ‘triple shift’

• Women do triple shift of house, paid and emotion work

Southerton (2011) - quality time

• Mothers face greater difficulty in organising quality time due to:

  • 24/7 society - time has become more fragmented and de-routinised

  • Flexible working patterns leading to lack of routines

  • Fragmented blocks of time meaning no clear time to dedicate as quality time.

• Men have blocks of leisure time whereas women’s leisure time is punctuated by childcare

• Women more likely to multitask

• Being ‘pushed for time’ doesn’t show up in quantitative ways