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Families and Households - Coggle Diagram
Families and Households
Families and social policy
Demography
Theories of the family
Childhood
Childhood as a social construct
The modern western notion of childhood:
Pilcher
notes the most important feature of childhood is separateness. Childhood is seen as a clear and distinct life stage, and children in our society occupy a separate status from adults.
This is emphasised in several ways e.g., laws regulating what children are allowed to do, differences in dress and products and services.
Related to this separateness of children's status is the idea of childhood as a 'golden age of happiness and innocence. However, this means that children are seen as vulnerable and in need of protection.
However, this view of childhood isn't found in all societies,
Wagg
argues that whole humans go through the same stages of physical development, and different cultures construct or define this process differently.
The globalisation of western childhood:
Some sociologists argue that western notions of childhood are being globalised. Internation humanitarian and welfare agencies have exported and imposed on the rest of the world, western norms of what childhood should be.
For example, campaigns against child labour, or concerns about 'street children' in developing countries, reflect western views about how childhood 'ought' to be.
However, arguably such campaigns have little impact on the position of children in developing countries.
Cross-cultural differences in childhood:
Benedict
argues that children in simpler, non-industrial societies are generally treated differently from their modern western counterparts in 3 ways:
1.
They take responsibility at an early age.
Punch's
study of childhood in rural Bolivia found that once children are 5, they are expected to take on work responsibilities.
Less value is placed on children showing obedience to adult authority.
Firth
found that among the Tikopia of the western Pacific, doing as you are told by a grown-up is regarded as a concession to be granted by the child.
Children's sexual behaviour is often viewed differently.
Malinowksi
found that Trobriand Islanders took an attitude of 'tolerance and amused interests towards children's sexual explorations and activities.
Historical differences in childhood:
Aries
argues that in the Middle Ages, 'the idea of childhood didn't exist.' Children weren't seen as having a different nature or need from adults.
Children were 'mini-adults' with the same rights, duties and skills as adults.
Shorter
argued that high death rates encouraged indifference and neglect, especially towards infants.
The modern cult of childhood:
Aries says elements of the modern notion of childhood gradually began to emerge from the 13th century onwards:
Schools came to specialise purely in the education of the young. This relfected the influence of the church.
By the 17th century there was a growing distinction between children's and adult's clothing.
By the 18th century, handbooks on childrearing were widely available - a sign of the growing child-centredness.
Family diversity
Changing family patterns
Couples
The domestic division of labour
The symmetrical family:
Young and Willmott
take a ‘march of progress view of the family's history. They argue that there has been a long-term trend away from segregated conjugal roles and towards joint conjugal roles and the ‘symmetrical family’.
Symmetrical family:
the roles of husbands and wives, although not identical, are now much more similar.
Young and Willmott found that the symmetrical family was more common among younger couples, those who are geographically and socially isolated, and the affluent.
Young and Willmott see the rise of the symmetrical nuclear family as the result of major social changes that have taken place during the past century.
Many of these factors are interlinked.
For example, married women bringing a second wage into the home raises the family’s standards of living. This means the couple can afford more labour-saving devices. This makes housework easier and encourages men to do more.
Joint and segregated conjugal roles:
Bott
distinguishes between 2 types of conjugal roles; that is, roles within marriage; segregated conjugal roles and joint conjugal roles.
Young and Willmott
identified a pattern of segregated conjugal roles in their study of traditional working-class extended families in Bethnal Green, east London, in the 1950s.
Men were the breadwinners, they played little part in home life and spent their leisure time with workmates in pubs and working men’s clubs.
Women were full-time housewives with sole responsibility for housework and childcare, helped by their female relatives. The limited leisure women had was also spent with female kin.
A feminist view of housework
Feminist sociologists reject this ‘march of progress view. They argue that little has changed. They see this inequality as stemming from the fact that the family and society are patriarchal.
Oakley
argues that Y+Ws claims are exaggerated. Although Young and Willmott found that most of the husbands they interviewed ‘helped’ their wives at least once a week. For Oakley, this is hardly convincing evidence of symmetry.
Oakley
found some evidence of husbands helping in the home but no evidence of a trend towards symmetry. Only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework, and only 25% had a high level of participation in childcare
Boulton
found that fewer than 20% of husbands have a major role in childcare. She argues that Young and Willmott exaggerate men’s contributions by looking at the tasks involving childcare rather than the responsibilities. A father might help with specific tasks, but it was almost always the mother who was responsible for the child’s security and well-being.
Parsons: instrumental and expressive roles:
In the traditional nuclear family, the role of the husbands and wives are segregated. In Parsons’ functionalist model of the family, there is a clear division of labour between spouses.
Parsons
argues that this division of labour is based on biological differences, with women ‘naturally’ suited to the nurturing role and men to that of the provider. He claims that the division of labour is beneficial to both men and women, to their children and to wider society.
Critics of parsons:
Young and Willmott 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 labour is natural. In addition, they argue that it only benefits men.
Domestic violence
Are couples becoming more equal
The impact of paid work:
Most of the women in Oakley’s study in the 1970s were full-time housewives, but today many more wives go out to work, either full-time or part-time. This trend towards both partners working 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 the housework and childcare? This is a march of progress view
Or does it simply mean that women now have to carry a ‘dual burden’ of paid work as well as domestic work? This is a feminist view
The feminist view
In this view, women going into paid work has not led to greater equality in the division of domestic labour, 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 labour was unjust as 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 etc... while men were more likely to do small repairs around the house. These patterns were much the same as they had been in 1944.
Taking responsibility for children:
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 emotion work, where they are responsible for managing the emotions and feelings of family members, 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.
The march of progress view:
In this view, men are becoming more involved in housework and childcare just as women are becoming more involved with paid work outside the home
Gershuny
argues that women working full-time is leading to a more equal division of labour in the home. Using time studies, he found that these women did less domestic work than other women.
O’Sullivan’s
analysis of nationally represented 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 labour and that were participating more in traditional ‘women’s’ tasks.
The British Social Attitudes (BSA)
survey found a fall in the number of people who think it is the man’s job to earn money and the woman’s job to look after the home and family. In 1984, 45% of men and 41% of women agreed with this view, but by 2021 only 13% of men and 12% of women agreed.
Explaining the gender division of labour:
Crompton and Lyonette
identify 2 different explanations for the unequal division of labour: 1. The cultural or ideological explanation of inequality and 2. The material or economic explanation of inequality.
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 labour-saving devices, ready meals, domestic help, and childcare, rather than having to spend time carrying labour-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 labour as she does.
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.
The
BSA
survey found that less than 10% of those agreed with a traditional division of labour, as against 30% of the over-65s. this indicates a long-term change in norms, values, and attitudes, reflecting changes in the gender role socialisation of younger age groups in favour of more equal relationships.
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. These changes have led to people’s time being more fragmented and ‘de-routinised’.
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 multitask than men, this indicates that women are carrying a dual burden in which they face an increased volume of activities to be managed.
Resources and decision making in households
Money management:
Pahl and Vogler
identify 2 main types of control over family income:
The Allowance System
, where men give their wives an allowance out of which they must budget to meet the family’s needs, with the man retaining any surplus income for himself.
Pooling
, where both partners have access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure.
Decision making:
It is often assumed that pooling indicates more equality in decision-making and control over resources, and it’s more common among couples where both partners work full-time.
Hardill’s
study of 30 dual-career professional couples found that the important decisions were usually taken either by the man alone or jointly and that his career normally took priority when deciding whether to move house for a new job.
Edgell’s
study of professional couples found that: very important decisions were either taken by the husband alone or taking jointly but with the husband having the final say, important decisions were usually taken jointly, and seldom by the wife alone and less important decisions were usually made by the wife.
A ‘personal life’ perspective on money:
From this perspective, the meanings that money may have in relationships cannot be taken for granted.
Smart
found that some gay men and lesbians attached no importance to who controlled the money and were perfectly happy to leave this to their partners. They did not see the control of money as meaning either equality on inequality in the relationship.
Weeks et al
found that the typical pattern was pooling some money for household spending. This mon4y management system thus reflects a value of ‘co-independence’ where there is sharing, but where each partner retains control over some money and maintains a sense of independence.
The meaning of money:
Pahl
notes that just pooling money doesn’t necessarily mean there is equality. We also need to know who controls the pooled money and whether each partner contributes equally, nor does each partner keeping their money separately always mean inequality.
Vogler et al
found that cohabitating couples were less likely to pool their money - perhaps from a desire to maintain their independence. Yet evidence suggests that cohabitating couples are more likely than married couples to share domestic tasks equally.
Nyman
notes, money has no automatic, fixed or natural meaning and different couples define it in different ways. These meanings can reflect the nature of the relationship.
Cultural Vs material explanations:
Feminists argue that inequalities in decision-making are not simply the result of inequalities in earnings. They argue that in a patriarchal society, the cultural definition of men as decision-makers is deeply integrated into both men and women and instilled through gender role socialisation. Until this definition is challenged, decision-making is likely to remain unequal.