Domestic division of labour

Parson (1955) — conjugal roles

• Husband: instrumental

  • Achieving success at work in order to financially provide for the family

• Wife: expressive

  • Primarily socialising the children, meeting the families emotional needs, being a homemaker instead of a wage earner

Bott (1957) — new conjugal roles

• Segregated conjugal roles = Parsons

  • + separate leisure activities

• Joint conjugal roles = equal division of housework and childcare + spend leisure time together

Young and Willmott (1962) — symmetrical family

• Trend towards joint conjugal roles

  • Husband/wife roles becoming more similar

  • Couples beginning to spend leisure time together

Young and Willmott (1962) — 3 causes of symmetrical family

1. Dual income and change in women’s position

2. Geographical mobility → less extended family to rely on for childcare

3. Labour-saving technology to allow men to do more housework

Young and Willmott (1962) — leisure time in separated conjugal role couples

• Men: spent with work colleagues in pubs or men’s clubs

• Women: limited, spent with female kin that helped them without housework and childcare

CRITICISM of 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) - % of husbands with a high participation in housework

• 15%

Oakley (1974) - % of husbands with a high participation in childcare + impact

• 25% (even then only ‘fun’ bits)

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

Oakley (1974) - couple’s description of father’s role

• ‘Taking an interest’

CRITICISM of Y and W — Boulton (1983)

• Looked at tasks instead of responsibilities.

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

Boulton — % of husbands that played a major role in childcare

<20%

Ferri and Smith 1996 - % of families in which fathers did the childcare

<4%

Dex and Ward (2007) - % of fathers that played with their children

78%

Dex and Ward (2007) - % of fathers that took the responsibility of caring for a sick child

<1%

Braun, Vincent and Ball - fraction of families that had father as main carer

3/70

Braun, Vincent and Ball - father’s view of caring for the children

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

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

• Sex-typing of domestic tasks still strong

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

Ward & Hetherington (1993) — impact of age

• 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

Ward & Hetherington (1993) - wives -x more likely to have been the last person to do the washing

30x

Ward & Hetherington (1993) - husband -x more likely to have been the last person to wash the car

4x

BSA (2013)

• 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

BSA (2013) — % of women that felt division of labour was unjust (they were doing more than their fair share

60%

BSA (2013) — average hours spent caring for family members per week

• Men: 10

• Women: 23

BSA (2013) — average hours spent doing housework per week

• Men: 8

• Women: 13

BSA (2013) — division of tasks

• Gender division of tasks (same pattern as 1994)

  • Men: small repairs around house

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

CRITICISM of BSA (2013) — 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) - 3 reasons mothers face greater difficulty in organising quality time

• 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.

Southerton (2011) - differences in men’s and women’s leisure time

• Men = blocks

• Women = punctuated by childcare; more likely to multitask

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

Dunne (1999) — gender scripts

• Lesbian couples are more likely to:

  • Have an equal relationship in which housework and childcare are shared and childcare is viewed positively

  • Have both partner’s careers viewed as equally important.

• Lesbian couples find that tasks are not linked to gender scripts and therefore shared equally

  • Heterosexual couples are under pressure to conform to deeply ingrained ‘gender scripts’ so tasks are performed that confirm their gender identities.

Gershuny (1994) — importance of primary socialisation

• Couples with parents who had an equal relationship more likely to do the same, showing that parental roles/primary socialisation is important.

  • Society is adapting to women working full time.

Man Yee Kan (2001) — generational shift

• Younger men do more domestic work

• Men do more housework than their dad

• Women do less housework than their mum

BSA (2018) — % of 75+s that disagree with trad division of labour

47%

BSA (2018) — % of under 35s that disagree with trad division of labour

75%

Man Yee Kan (2001) — for every £x /year earned, women do xh less housework/week

• For every £10,000/year earnt, women do 2 hours less housework per week

Arber and Ginn (1995)

• More pay equates to more products and services bought to reduce the number of labour-intensive domestic tasks women do.

Ramos (2003)

• Where the woman is a full-time earner and the man is unemployed, the man does as much domestic labour as she does.

Sullivan (2000)

• Working full-time as opposed to part-time makes the biggest difference in domestic work done per partner.