changing family patterns - divorce

feminist explanation for increase in divorce

• married women face a dual burden which creates conflict between husbands and wives

• change has been limited and slow in the private sphere

• marriage remains patriarchal and men continue to benefit from women’s triple shift of paid work, emotion work, and domestic work

• hochschild - women feel valued in work but at home men’s resistance to do housework is a source of frustration which makes marriage less stable

• the fact that both partners work leaves less time for emotion work and the emotions are not resolved

• Sige-Rushton - mothers who have a dual burden are more likely to divorce than non-working mothers in traditional divisions of labour

radical feminist explanation for increase in divorce

• bernard - many women feel a growing dissatisfaction with patriarchal marriage

• the rising divorce rate and the fact that most petitions are from women as evidence that feminist ideas are growing and becoming more widely accepted

• women are becoming more conscious of the patriarchy and are more confident in rejecting it

evidence to refute feminist explanations of divorce

• Cooke and Gash - found no evidence that working women are more likely to divorce

• due to the fact that working has become the norm for married women

postmodernist explanations for divorce

• modern values and traditions are losing hold

• each individual is free to pursue what’s in their best interest

• relationships become more fragile as people leave relationships that fail to offer fulfilment and searches for the pure relationships

• exists solely to satisfy the partners needs, not out of a sense of tradition

• rising divorce rate also normalises divorce and emphasises individualisation

• other ways that modern society encourages individualism (women working) also leads to breakdown as the wants of both members may come into conflict

what is the new right view on divorce

• creates dependency and an underclass of dependent women

• divorce is undesirable as it undermines the strength of the conventional family

• threatens stability of society

feminist view on divorce

• desirable as women are breaking free from patriarchal oppression

postmodernist view on divorce

• divorce rate shows that individuals have greater freedom