A Level Sociology

Families and Households

Topic Two

Couples

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Objectives:

Understand the ways in which gender roles have changed Identify differences in power relationships including; decision making, control of resources

and domestic violence Evaluate whether or not the family has become more symmetrical

The Domestic Division of Labour:

The domestic division of labour refers to the roles that men and women play in relation to the housework, childcare and paid work. Sociologists are interested in whether men and women share domestic tasks equally.

Do men and women share domestic tasks equally?

Parsons - Instrumental and Expressive Roles:

In Parsons’ functionalist model of the family, for example, there is a clear division of labour between the spouses. Parsons argues that the two roles are the natural way and the division of labour is based on biological differences with women ‘naturally’ suited to the nurturing role and men the provider.

Activity – recap the two roles below:

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Instrumental role Expressive role

Bott – Joint and Segregated Roles:

Bott distinguishes between two types of conjugal roles (the roles played by husband and wife), that is, within marriage. These are segregated and joint conjugal roles. Identify which is which:

.....................................where the couple have separated roles and responsibilities; the women as care giver and housewife and the male as breadwinner. Leisure activities were also separate.

..................................... where the couple share paid work, domestic tasks and childcare. They also share in leisure activities.

Wilmott and Young – the Symmetrical Family:

A symmetrical family is one in which husbands and wives roles are more like joint conjugal roles than they were, although there are still some differences between men and women’s roles and responsibilities.

Willmott and Young argue the ‘march of progress’ view that families are increasingly like this. The characteristics of a symmetrical family are;

Women go out to work, although this is often part-time

Men now help with childcare and housework

Couples spend leisure times together, being ‘home-centred’ or privatised

How does this show women’s position within the family has changed from Parson’s idea of women being ‘expressive leaders’?

This change in family roles to more symmetrical families was due to some major social factors, as listed in the table below.

Social change

Example

Changes in women’s role

Geographic More couple living away from the communities they grew up in.

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mobility Couples move for work or settle in cities they went to university in.

New technologies

Higher standards of living

Linked to changes in women role because...

Makes men stay at home more because...

However, Rosemary Crompton (1997) argues that the division of labour in the home is still unequal. This is because men still earn more than women. She supports her argument with the evidence that women still earn three-quarter of what men earn. Therefore she concludes while earnings are unequal so is the division of labour in the home. In other words, while women earn less, they will be expected to do more housework and childcare.

Young and Willmott stated that families were becoming more symmetrical, and that symmetrical families were characterised by the following:

1. Stable

2. Child-centred

3. Greater levels of equality between males and females

4. "Mutual adaptation between needs of home and economy”

However, as you can see below there are issues with this logic:

1. Stable? Rising divorce rates Domestic violence Child abuse

2. Child-centred?

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Or centred on the needs of adults? Or centred on the needs of the economy?

3. Greater levels of equality between males and females? Pay gap Women still do more housework Men still dominate decision making4. "Mutual adaptation between needs of home and economy”? Mutual adaptation? Or focused on the needs of the economy at the expense of family life –

increase in dual career families

You can use the above to help evaluate the work of Wilmott and Young to argue that the family has not become more symmetrical.

Feminist Views of Housework:

Feminists reject Willmott and Young’s ‘march of progress’ argument (well, all except liberal feminists).

Oakley

Oakley (1974) found contrary evidence which shows problems with the idea of a ‘symmetrical family’. She claims this is a huge overstatement because men’s ‘help’ with housework may be tiny. She found it often would be tasks like making breakfast once a week or taking the children to the park on the odd occasion. Read the definition of the word symmetrical below and expand on what Oakley meant:

Definition: Symmetrical balance is seen in perfectly centred compositions or those with mirror images. Therefore meaning the same on both sides.

Why is the family not symmetrical according to Oakley?

Ann Oakley’s finding that only 15% of men had a high level of participation in housework and 25% in childcare. How does this show Willmott and Young’s conclusion to be problematic?

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Oakley also argues that the childcare which men partake in is the enjoyable parts. Playing with the children on a Sunday for instance, not getting them up and out for school in the mornings. This means that women actually miss out on the good bits-hardly fair! Oakley found most couples define a father’s role as just ‘taking an interest’.

Boulton

Later research by Mary Boulton (1983) supports Oakley’s argument. She also found that Willmott and Young had exaggerated their claim of a symmetrical family. Less than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare. The women was nearly always responsible for the security and well-being of the couple’s children.

Braun, Vincent and Ball (2011) supported the work of Boulton. They found in their study of seventy families that in only three of these was the father the main carer – they argued most are background fathers with a “provider ideology”.

Activity: How might this limit women’s opportunities in the workplace?

Warde and Hetherington

From research in Manchester in 1993 Alan Warde and Kevin Hetherington show domestic tasks are specifically associated with males or females, or sex-typed as they called it. They found wives were 30 times more likely to be the last person to have washed up and men were 4 times more likely to have washed the car.

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Overview:

The Impact of Paid Work:

There is sociological debate over whether the feminisation of the workplace (more women doing paid work) is a good thing. If men still don’t help in the home then women are left with twice the work-a dual burden.

Gershuny (1994) found that women who do paid work do less work within the home. He found wives with no job did 83% of housework, wives with a part-time job did 82% and women with a full time job did 73% of housework. He also found that the longer a woman was in paid work for, the more housework her husband did. Couples whose parents had more equal roles in domestic tasks also then share in domestic tasks more.

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Sociologist What they think-their conclusions about the division of labour

Parsons

Willmott and Young

Ann Oakley

Mary Boulton

Alan Warde and Kevin Hetherington

Activity: what does Gershuny’s study show?

Hilary Silver and Juliet Schor argue that increased technology mean women have less timely housework to do. They can afford it because they are now often working. They say this has led to the ‘death of the housewife role’.

Activity: list all the household appliances you have in your home – identify how these help reduce the housework:

However, on the other side of the argument Elsa Ferri and Kate Smith (1996) provide evidence that women suffer from a dual burden-double the work because they go out to work and also have to work in the home. They took a sample of 1,589 33-year-olds and found that in less than 4% of the cases the man was in charge of child care.

Lydia Morris backs up this idea of the dual burden too. She found that unemployed men see domestic tasks as ‘women’s work’. Especially as their masculinity may be already decreased from unemployment and they don’t want to ruin their ‘macho’ manly image any further.

Duncombe and Marsden in 1995 found there may actually be a ‘triple burden’ because women are used for emotional support, as well as 1) housework and childcare and 2) paid work. Emotional labour includes caring for a sick child with compassion.

Activity: define the concepts below:

Dual burden –

Triple shift –

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Gillian Dunne (1999) says that there are ‘gender scripts’ setting out male and female roles. These are social expectations of men and women doing set things; similar to Warde and Hetherington’s 1993 idea of sex-typing tasks. Dunne demonstrates her point by showing that in lesbian couple’s housework and childcare is because there are no gender scripts to live up to. In her study of 36 co-habiting lesbian couples with children she found domestic tasks were shared.

Do Women Suffer a Dual Burden? It Depends:

The use of childcare makes a big difference, Sara Arber and Jay Ginn (1995) found this helps middle class women avoid a dual burden. However they argue that working class women who can’t afford child care are trapped with a dual burden as they have to look after their children as well as working. The same has been found for hiring domestic help too.

Man-Yee Kan (2001) found that income from employment, age and education affected how much housework women did; better-paid, younger, better-educated women did less housework. Having a degree puts women in a better position. However, if the woman earns more than a man the woman ends up doing more housework as the male’s masculinity is threatened.

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This sociological debate about whether women suffer the effects of a dual burden is an important one for you to know. It deals with the effects caused by the social change of the feminisation of the workforce. Summarise the sociologists in this revision table.

Sociologist/s Dual burden created?

Details of conclusion/ evidence

Gershuny No Found wives with no job did 83% of housework; a part-time job 82% and a full time job 73%. The longer a woman was in paid work for, the more housework her husband did. If parents had more equal roles in domestic tasks more shared.

Hilary Silver and Juliet Schor

Elsa Ferri and Kate Smith

Lydia Morris

Sara Arber and Jay Ginn

No for middleclass Yes for working class

Duncombe and Marsden

Gillian Dunne

Man-Yee Kan

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Resources and Decision Making:

Money management

Some sociologists have shown that men don’t always give women reliable and fair amounts of money if they are working and the women does the unpaid jobs of housework and childcare. Hilary Graham (1984) found over half the women in her study preferred benefits to their previous financial support from their husbands after they split up. It was more regular and reliable.

The earner of the house having more say in decisions has been shown to be the case. Jan Pahl and Carolyn Vogler (1993) identify two types of control over income. Pooling, where both partner have joint access to income, for example having a joint bank account. The second is an allowance system, where men give women a budget for the home and childcare and keep the rest. Pahl and Vogler found pooling was on the rise. They compared a sample of 1,211 couples with their parents. Pooling had increased from 19% with the parents to 50% with the current couples.

In today’s society new patterns of money management are emerging. Total pooling is giving way to partial pooling, where couples contribute some of their income to a joint account solely for joint expenses and keep the rest separate. In unmarried heterosexual couples partial pooling is more prevalent than pooling, especially when the couple is child free.

Within same-sex couples there is a higher degree of egalitarianism (equality) and more separation in the couples’ finances than has been observed for heterosexual married couples.

However, Pahl notes that pooling money does not necessarily mean there is equality. We also need to know who controls the pooled money and whether each partner contributes equally (despite any differences in income). Vogler et al found cohabiting couples were less likely to pool their money – perhaps from a desire to maintain their independence. Yet evidence suggests that cohabiting couples are more likely than married couples to share domestic tasks equally.

A ‘personal life’ perspective

This perspective focuses on the meanings couples give to who controls the money. From this perspective, the meanings that money may have in relationships cannot be taken for granted. For example, while we might assume that one partner controlling the money is a sign of inequality in the relationship, for some couples it may not have this meaning. Smart found that there is greater freedom for same-sex couples to do what suits them as a couple.

Stretch yourself – Why do same-sex couples have more equal relationships in terms of money management?

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Decision making

Stephen Edgell (1980) found that the most important decisions are taken by men (like moving house), women tend to take the less important decisions (like food choice). Some feminists argue that rather than being linked to who brings in income, men take more decisions because we live in a patriarchy so we believe that men are in control and are most important.

Patterns of Domestic Violence:

Domestic violence is defined as ‘any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality’ (Home Office).

This includes; psychological, physical, sexual, financial and emotional violence or abuse.

Sociologists have challenged the view that domestic violence is the work of a few disturbed individuals because:

Domestic violence is far too widespread to be simply the work of a few disturbed people Domestic violence does not occur randomly but follows particular social patterns and these

patterns have social causes. The most striking of these patterns is mainly violence by men against women

The British Crime Survey in 2007 found that domestic violence accounts for almost a sixth of all violent crime. This has been shown to be most commonly men’s violence against women. Kathryn Coleman (2007) found women more likely than men to have experience ‘intimate violence’ across all four types of abuse-partner abuse, family abuse, sexual assault and stalking. Mirrlees-Black found 99% of this on women was by men. Mirrlees-Black surveyed 16,000 people and estimated there was around 6.6 million domestic assaults a year and 1 in 4 women had been assaulted by a partner.

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Activity – some social groups are at a higher risk of domestic violence. List who these groups may be:

Dobash and Dobash site examples of violent domestic abuse from sensitive interviews with victims. They found incidences were set off from women challenging men (for example as to why they were late home for a meal). They argue marriage legitimates violence against women because husbands tend to be in charge and women are often dependant.

Official statistics

These under represent the true extent of domestic violence because:

Victims may be unwilling to report it to the police. Yearnshire found that on average a woman suffers 35 assaults before making a report. Domestic violence is the violent crime that is least likely to be reported. Victims may be scared of repercussions or may not see it as a serious offence

Police and prosecutors may be reluctant to record, investigate or prosecute those cases that are reported to them. This is because they are not willing to become involved in the family. This is because the family is a private sphere, so access to it by the state should be limited. They see the individual as a free agent and so it is assumed that if a woman is experiencing domestic violence they are free to leave.

Statistics therefore do not show a real representation of domestic violence – they do not include the ‘dark figure’ of crime.

Understanding Domestic Violence:

Radical feminism explanations

They believe that men are violent towards women to maintain a patriarchy. Millet and Firestone argue that all societies have been founded on patriarchy. They see the key division in society as that between men and women. Men are the enemy: they are the oppressors and exploiters of women.

Radical feminists see the family and marriage as the key institution in patriarchal society and the main source of women’s oppression. Within the family men dominate women through domestic violence or the threat of it. Domestic violence serves the preserve the power that all men have over women. In their view, male domination of state institutions helps to explain the reluctance of the police and courts to deal effectively with cases of domestic violence.

Activity – in pairs develop 2 evaluation points for this explanation:

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Materialistic explanation

This focuses on economic or material factors such as inequalities in income and housing to explain why some groups are more at risk than others. Wilkinson sees domestic violence as the result of stress on family members caused by social inequality.

Inequality means that some families have fewer resources than others. Those on low incomes or living in overcrowded accommodation are likely to experience higher levels of stress. This reduces their chances of maintaining stable, caring relationships and increases the risk of conflict and violence. Those with less power, status and wealth are at greater risk.

Evaluation

They do not explain why women are more likely to suffer domestic violence than men – Marxist feminists seek to explain this

Marxist feminist explanations

They see inequality as causing domestic violence. Fran Ansley says that women are the ‘takers of shit’. She argues that domestic violence is the product of capitalism: male workers are exploited at work and they take their frustrations out on women.

Evaluation

It is economically deterministic – it takes the blame away from the individual and not all working class men carry out domestic violence

Reason for violence? Link to the family

Radical Feminists

Materialistic explanation

Marxist feminist

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Glossary of Key Terms to Learn:

Concept DefinitionInstrumental role

Expressive role

Segregated conjugal role

Joint conjugal role

Symmetrical family

Sex-typing/gender scripts

Decision making

Dual burden

Triple shift

Pooling

Allowance system

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Topic Summary:

Sociologists disagree as to whether couples are becoming more equal. ___________________ argue for the necessity of ___________________________________ based on biological differences between the sexes.

However, ‘______________________________’ Sociologists argue that the family is becoming more _____________________, with joint conjugal roles.

________________ disagree, arguing that men’s contribution remains minimal and women now shoulder a __________________________ of paid and unpaid work, or even perform a ___________________________ that also includes emotion work.

Couples remain unequal in terms of ___________________________ and __________________________________________. Men earn more and are more likely to take the major decision, even when incomes are pooled. The ________________________________ argues that we need to understand the different meanings money can have within a relationship.

___________________________ argue that ___________________________ is an extreme form of ______________________________ over women. However, though most victims are female, not all women are equally at risk.

March of progress Functionalists Symmetrical decision making

Radical feminists segregated conjugal roles Feminists

Personal life perspective control of resources dual burden

Patriarchal power domestic violence triple shift

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Quick Check Questions:

1. What is the difference between segregated conjugal roles and joint conjugal roles?

2. Why has the symmetrical family developed?

3. Identify two features of a symmetrical family

4. Why does Oakley criticise the symmetrical family?

5. What is the dual burden?

6. What does Man-Yee Khan discuss?

7. What reason does Edgell give for why men have more power to influence family decision making?

8. Why does domestic violence happen according to Marxist feminists?

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Exam questions:

Outline and explain two ways in which government policies may affect family structure (10 marks)

POINT ONE

POINT TWO

Item

Domestic violence accounts for up to a quarter of all recorded violent crime. Victims are more likely to be female and offenders male: domestic violence is linked to gender roles in a patriarchal society. However, not all women are equally likely to suffer domestic violence. Victims- both female and male – are more likely to belong to disadvantaged social groups and live under difficult circumstances.

Applying material from item, analyse two reasons for patterns of domestic violence (10 marks)

POINT ONE

POINT TWO

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Item

March of progress sociologists argue that the family is becoming more equal. Increasingly today, both partners are likely to have jobs outside the home and they both carry out household chores and provide childcare. However, feminist sociologists reject this claim. They argue that the family is still patriarchal and that women carry a dual burden.

Applying material from Item and your knowledge, evaluate the view that the division of labour in couples is now equal (20 marks)

Introduction

P1 Explanation: Evaluation:

P2 Explanation: Evaluation:

P3 Explanation: Evaluation:

P4 Explanation: Evaluation:

Conclusion

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Independent Study Checklist:

Activity Tick when doneComplete an A3 revision sheet for this topic

Create revision cards/key cards for the concepts in this topic

Read the Sociological Review articles ‘Are we in the age of a Superdad?’ and ‘Domestic Violence’ and create a factsheet with key notes on – use the subheadings to help guide the key information

Make flash cards for all the key studies and complete one card for each person. Write the key information about that persons study, including the key findings on one side and then put evaluation on the back of the card

Create a Kahoot quiz or quizlett on this topic

Do women have a dual burden? Create a poster with evidence to support either ‘Yes women do have a dual burden’ or ‘No women don’t have a dual burden’

For more resources and articles see: www.aqusociology.weebly.com

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