Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Families and Households - Coggle Diagram
Families and Households
Couples
Recources and decision making
The domestic division of labour:
Bott (1957) - Joint and segregated conjugal roles:
Segregated: where the couple has separated roles (Parsons' model), they spend their leisure time apart.
Joint: where the couple share tasks, and share their leisure time together.
Young and Willmott identified a pattern of segregated conjugal roles in their study of traditional working-class families in Bethnal Green, in the 1950s
men were the breadwinners, played little part in home life, and spent their leisure time with friends.
women were full-time housewives with sole responsibility for housework and child care, helped by their female relatives
Parsons (1955) - Instrumental and expressive roles:
the husband has an instrumental role.
the wife has an expressive role.
Parsons argues that this division of labor is based on biological differences, with women naturally suited to the nurturing role and men to that of the provider.
Critics: Young and Willmott (1962) argue that men are now taking a greater share of domestic tasks and more wives are becoming wage earners.
Feminist sociologists reject Parsons' view that the division of labor is natural, they argue that it only benefits men
Young and Willmott (1973) - The symmetrical family:
they take a 'march of progress view' of the history of the family, they see family life as gradually improving for all its members, becoming more equal and democratic.
by the symmetrical family they mean one in which the roles of husbands and wives are similar:
women go out to work
men now help with housework and childcare
couples now spend their leisure time together
Young and Willmott found that the symmetrical family was more common in younger couples, those who are geographically mobile and socially isolated, and the more affluent, they see a rise in the symmetrical nuclear family as a result of major social changes:
changes in women's position
geographical mobility
new technology
higher standards of living
A feminist view of housework:
Feminist sociologists reject the 'march of progress' view, they argue little has changed, and they see this inequality as stemming from the act that the family and society are patriarchal.
Oakley (1974) criticizes Young and Willmott's view that the family is symmetrical, she argues their claims are exaggerated, even though they found that most of the husbands they interviewed 'helped' their wives at least once a week, for Oakley this hardly shows convincing evidence of symmetry.
Oakley found that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework, and only 25% has a high level of participation in childcare.
Boulton (1983) found that fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare, she argues that Young and Willmott exaggerate men's contribution by looking at the tasks involved with childcare rather than the responsibilities.
Warde and Hetherington (1993) found that men would only carry out 'female' tasks when their partner wasn't around to do them, nevertheless, they did find evidence of a slight change of attitude among younger men, they no longer assumed that women should do the housework, and were more likely to think they were doing less than their fair share.
Are couples becoming more equal?
The impact of paid work:
most of the women in Oakley's study in the 70s were full-time housewives, but today many more wives go out to work, this trend raises 2 questions:
is it leading to a more equal division of domestic tasks with a 'new man' taking responsibility and doing an equal share of housework and childcare? (March of progress).
does it simply mean that women now have to carry a 'dual burden'? (feminist view)
Taking responsibility for children:
Another problem with such surveys is that they often focus only on easily quantifiable aspects such as who performs which tasks or how much time they spend doing them.
Boulton points out that although fathers may help by performing specific childcare tasks, it's usually the mother who takes responsibility for the child’s security and well-being.
Ferri and Smith found that fathers took responsibility for childcare in fewer than 4% of families.
Dex and Ward found that, although fathers had quite high levels of involvement with their 3-year-olds, when it came to caring for a sick child, only 1% of fathers took the main responsibility.
Braun, Vincent, and Ball found that in only 3 families out of 70 studied the father was the main carer. Most were ‘background fathers’; helping with childcare was more about their relationship with their partner than their responsibility towards their children. Most fathers held a ‘provider ideology’, while mothers saw themselves as the primary carers. This was underpinned by ideas about ‘intensive mothering’ in the media telling women how to be good mothers.
Emotion work and the triple shift:
Feminists have noted that women are often required to perform emotional work, where they are responsible for managing the emotions and feelings of family members, such as handling jealousies and squabbles between siblings, ensuring everyone is kept happy, and so on, while at the same time exercising control over their own emotions.
Duncombe and Marsden argue that women have to perform a ‘triple shift’ of housework, paid work, and emotional work.
Taking responsibility for quality time:
Southerton says that coordinating, scheduling, and managing the family’s ‘quality time’ together is another responsibility that usually falls to mothers.
this has become more difficult in today’s late modern society with recent social changes such as the emergence of the 24/7 society and flexible working patterns. These changes have led to people’s time being more fragmented and ‘de-routinized’.
Southerton also notes that, although some studies show that men and women have equal amounts of leisure time, they have different experiences of them. Women are also more likely to multi-task than men, this indicates that women are carrying a dual burden in which they face an increased volume of activities to be managed.
The feminist view:
in this view, women going into paid work has not led to greater equality in the division of domestic labor, there is still little sign of the ‘new man'.
the BSA found that in 2012 men on average did 8 hours of housework a week, whereas women did 13 hours. Similarly, men spent 10 hours of care for family members, whereas women spent 23 hours. Overall, women did twice as much as men, 60% of women felt this division of labor was unjust s they were doing more than their fair share.
the BSA also found that couples continue to divide household tasks along traditional gender lines. For example, women were much more likely to do the laundry, care for sick family members, shop for groceries, do the cleaning and prepare the meals, while men were more likely to do small repairs around the house. These patterns were much the same as they had been in 1944.
Explaining the gender division of labor:
Crompton and Lyonette identify 2 different explanations for the unequal division of labor: 1. The cultural or ideological explanation of inequality and 2. The material or economic explanation of inequality.
Evidence for the cultural explanation:
Gershuny found that couples whose parents had a more equal relationship are more likely to share housework equally themselves. This suggests parental roles are important, he argues that social values are gradually adapting to the fact that women are now working full-time, establishing a new norm that men should do more domestic work.
Man Yee Kan found that younger men do more domestic work. Similarly, according to the Future Foundation, most men claimed to do more housework than their fathers and most women claimed to be less than their mothers. This suggests a generational shift in behavior is occurring.
the British Social Attitudes Survey found that less than 10% of under-35’s agreed with a traditional division of labor, as against 30% of the over-65’s. this indicates a long-term change in norms, values, and attitudes, reflecting changes in the gender role socialization of younger age groups in favor of more equal relationships.
Dunne found that lesbian couples had more symmetrical relationships because of the absence of traditional heterosexual ‘gender scripts’, that is, norms that set out the different gender roles men and women are expected to play.
Evidence for the material explanation:
Kan found that for every £10,000 a year more a woman earns, she does two hours less housework per week.
Arber and Ginn found that better-paid, middle-class women were more able to buy commercially produced products and services, such as labor-saving devices, ready meals, domestic help, and childcare, rather than having to spend time carrying labor-intensive domestic tasks themselves.
Ramos found that where the woman is the full-time breadwinner and the man is unemployed, he does as much domestic labor as she does.
Sullivan shows that working full-time rather than part-time makes the biggest difference in terms of how much domestic work each partner does. Sullivan suggests that this may be because working full-time brings women’s earnings much closer to those of their partners.
The march of progress view:
Gershuny (1994) argues that women working full-time is leading to a more equal division of labor in the home, using time studies, he found that these women did less domestic work than other women
Sullivan's (2000) analysis of nationally representative data collected in 1975, 1987, and 1997 found a trend towards women doing a smaller share of the domestic work and men doing more, her analysis showed an increase in the number of couples with an equal division of labor.
the British Social Attitudes survey (2013) found a fall in the number of people who think it is a man's job to earn money and the women's job to look after the home and family, in 1984, 45% of men and 41% of women agreed with this view but by 2012 only 13% of men and 12% of women agreed.
Theories of the family
Family patterns
Family diversity
Families and social policy
Childhood
Childhood as a social construct
Demography