couples - notes

Domestic division of labour

The roles that men & women play in relation to housework, paid work, childcare

  • Bott

Conjugal roles:

  1. Segregated - couples have separate roles; breadwinner & housewife. Leisure activities also tend to be separate (50’s)

  2. Integrated - couples share chores & childcare amongst themselves fairly and spend their leisure time together (70’s onward)

  • Parsons

The differences between the sexes are natural & biological

2 roles

  1. Instrumental - father performs this role of leader & provider as he is the breadwinner

  2. Expressive - wife performs this role of socialisation of the children & emotional support as she is the homemaker

  • Willmott & Young

The family has adapted & changed over time, as society has, to become better & more equal (March of progress view)

~ Initial research in the 50’s - conjugal roles were segregated

~ Later research in the 70’s - the family is now ‘symmetrical’ (integrated conjugal roles)

Features of the symmetrical family:

. Women are Moore likely to be in paid work

. Conjugal roles are increasingly similar - share their time & domestic work together

. Shared decisions

. Men help more with domestic chores - 72% of husbands ‘help in the house’

~ Criticism

Anne Oakley - men only had to do one household chore a week to qualify

Why has this shift occurred?

  • Higher living standards

Such as central heating, TV, and the internet, have encouraged couples to become more home centred

  • Changes in women’s position

Most women are now in paid employment which has increased their independence & authority in the family, and reduced the time spent on housework

  • Geographical mobility

In contemporary society, geographically close-knit ties of the extended family has been weakened → less pressure from extended family members to retain traditional roles & it’s therefore easier to adopt new roles in the relationship

  • The commercialisation of housework

New consumer goods & services to help with reducing the burden of housework - enables women to do a bit less & encourages men to do a bit more

E.g. washing machines, vacuums

  • The new dad

Kaufman

Interviewed 70 American fathers with at least one child under 18

Found: between 1970 & 2010 the average American man increased the amount of time spent on household chores by more than 2 hours per day

~ Criticism

Feminist perspective - while men are perhaps more involved in childcare than they use to be, they choose to do the more enjoyable activities like playing with the children & taking them on days out

Men are only seen as ‘helping out’ with housework

Feminist view of housework

  • Anne Oakley

Rejects the march of progress view for exaggerating, arguing that little has changed between men & women:

. Women still do most of the housework

. Women occupy a subordinate & dependent role within the family & wider society

Found: wives saw housework as their responsibility & if husbands helped it may be to take children to the park whilst the mother caught up on housework

  • Hochschild

Triple shift

  1. Housework

  2. Paid work

  3. Emotional work

  • Dunne

Studied 37 lesbian couples with dependent children & found they were more likely than heterosexual women to:

  1. Describe their relationship as equal in terms of housework & childcare

  2. Give equal importance to both partners careers

Because, heterosexual couples are under pressure to conform to deeply ingrained gender roles by performing different kinds of tasks

Whereas this does not exist in same-sex relationships

Decision making

  • Barrett & McIntosh

Men gain far more from women’s domestic work than they give back in financial support & the support they do give often comes with strings attached. Men usually make the decisions about spending on important items

Two types of control over family income

  1. Allowance system - men give their wives an allowance out of which they have to budget to meet the families needs, with the man retaining any surplus income for himself

  2. Pooling - both partners have access to income & joint responsibility for expenditure e.g. joint bank account

~ Handil - interviewed 30 duel-earner couples

Found: when income is pooled, the husband tends to hold more power in financial decisions, important decisions are taken by the man alone & his career took priority when deciding whether to move house for a new job

  • Edgell

  1. Very important decisions (change of job, moving house) were either taken by the husbands alone or jointly with the husbands having the final say

  2. Important decisions (children’s education, holidays) were taken jointly

  3. Less important decisions (home décor, food) were usually made by the wife

  • Evaluation

~ Gershuny - found that by 1995, 70% of couples said they had an equal say in decisions


Domestic violence

Definition: any incident or pattern of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 & over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality

1 out of 4 women, 1 out of 7 men will experience DV at some stage in their life

Coleman - found: 2 women a week are killed by a partner or former partner

  • Firestone - radical feminist explanation

Argues - all societies have been founded on patriarchy, men are the enemy: the oppressors & exploiters of women

Within the family, men dominate women though DV or the threat of it, this serves to preserve the power that all men have over women

Male domination in the state & CJS helps to explain the reluctance of the police & courts to deal effectively with DV cases

  • Evaluation

~ Not all men are aggressive, & they are also subject to DV as well

~ Fails to explain female violence towards men/children

~ Wrongly assumes all women are equally at risk, tends to be women who are younger, working class, or live in deprived areas

  • Wilkinson & Pickett - materialist explanation

DV is the result of stress on family members caused by material inequality. Those with less power, status, and wealth are at greater risk of being a victim

E.g. having fewer resources, living in overcrowded spaces, worries about money

  • Evaluation

~ Fails to explain why women are more likely to be victims than men

~ Fails to explain why not all lower-class workers commit acts of violence against their partner

~ Ignores that abuse can & does happen amongst higher social classes