Family T7 Flashcards
(42 cards)
What does the domestic division of labour refer to?
The roles that men and women play in relation to housework, childcare, and paid work.
According to Parsons (1955), should husbands and wives’ roles be equal?
No, Parsons believes there should be a clear division of labour.
What is the instrumental role in a marriage?
The husband’s role geared toward achieving success at work, acting as the breadwinner and provider.
What is the expressive role in a marriage?
The wife’s role that meets the family’s emotional needs, primarily as a homemaker and responsible for socializing children.
What is the basis of Parsons’ belief in the division of labour?
Biological differences between the sexes, with women suited for nurturing and men for providing.
Who agrees with Parsons’ view on the division of labour?
The New Right.
What do Young & Wilmott argue about men’s roles in domestic tasks?
Men are taking a greater share of domestic tasks and more wives are becoming wage earners.
Do feminists agree with Parsons’ view on the domestic division of labour?
No, feminists reject this view, arguing it is socially constructed and benefits men.
What are the two types of conjugal roles discussed by Bott (1957)?
- Segregated conjugal roles
- Joint conjugal roles
What characterizes segregated conjugal roles?
Couples have separate roles; a male breadwinner and a female homemaker, with separate leisure activities.
What characterizes joint conjugal roles?
Couples share tasks such as housework and childcare and spend leisure time together.
What did Young & Wilmott find in their 1950s study of traditional working-class families?
Most households had segregated roles.
In the 1950s, who were typically the breadwinners in families according to Young & Wilmott?
Men.
What was the typical role of women in the 1950s according to Young & Wilmott?
Full-time housewives with sole responsibility for housework and childcare.
True or False: In segregated roles, men played a significant part in home life.
False.
Pooling- sociologist
Pooling - where both partners have access to income and
joint responsibility for expenditure e.g. a joint bank account
Pooling is on the increase and the most common money management system
Decision-making
over resources. However where pooling income is controlled by the husband this tends to give
him more power in financial decisions. There is the assumption that pooling indicates more
equality in decision-making and control
found when studying professional couples that the important decisions
were usually taken by the man alone or jointly and his career usually took priority when
deciding whether to move house for a new job.
Edgell (1980) found that that there were 3 types of decisions that were made:
a) Very important decisions - these involved finance e.g. moving house and usually
taken by the husband or jointly but with the husband having the final say.
b) Important decisions - e.g. children’s education, holidays etc. usually taken jointly
seldom the wife alone.
c) Less important decisions - e.g. home décor, clothes, food usually made by the wife.
The reason why men tend to make the decisions is they earn more. But there is some
evidence to suggest a shift towards greater-equality significantly so when women are high
earners. This offers a material explanation to the inequality, however feminists would argue
there is a cultural explanation for the differences - inequalities in decision making reflect the
patriarchal nature of society where we have deeply ingrained gender scripts which dictate the
male as the decision maker.
However Pahl notes just pooling money doesn’t mean there is equality, we must understand
who controls the money and if both partners contribute equally. Likewise keeping money
separately doesn’t necessarily always mean inequality; cohab couples are less likely to poo
money yet are more likely to share domestic tasks than married couples.
Instead we need to understand what the meaning of money for couples is, Nyman
(2003) argues money has no fixed automatic meaning and different couples define it
in different ways.
A ‘personal life’ perspective on money
This focuses on the me
Dey, for example in one
elationahis and nannor dantellina tha mando macho a dian findaait, bars do far
Segregstef and conjugal roles
SEGREGATED CONJUGAL ROLES: where the couple have separate roles; a male
21:53
te.
JOINT CONJUGAL ROLES: where the couple share tasks such as housework an 50 of 03
childcare and also spends their leisure time together.
In the 1950s Young & Wilmott found, in their study of traditional workin
Bethnal Green, London, that most households had SEGREGATED role
• Men were the breadwinners
They played little part in home life and spent their leisure time in ti
• Women were full time housewives with sole responsibility for hous
THE SYMMETRICAL FAMILY
Young & Wilmott (1973) went back to Bethnal
Green in 1970s (this is called a longitudinal study -
done over time). They say family life is improving
over time this is known as a MARCH OF
PROGRESS.
They argue there has been a long term trend away from segregated roles to JOINT conjugal
roles, a family with joint roles they call a SYMMETRICAL FAMILY.
By symmetrical they mean where roles are more similar:
• Women now go out to work
• Men now help with housework
• Couples now spend leisure time together
They argue certain social changes have resulted in the development of the symmetrical
nuclear family:
• Changes in the position of women - incl. married women going out to work
• Geographic mobility - more couples living away from the communities they grew up
in New technology - labour saving devices
• Higher standards of living
EVALUATION
Feminists reject this MARCH OF PROGRESS, they say little
#FEMINISM
has changed: men and women remain unequal within the
family - women still do the most of the housework. They argue
that this inequality stems from the fact that the family and
society are male-dominated or PATRIARCHAL, in other words
women are kept subordinated. Oakley (1974) criticises Young & Wilmott’s view that the family
is now symmetrical; she says their claims are exaggerated. Although Young & Wilmott found
that husbands ‘helped’ their wives at least once a week Oakley argues that is hardly evidence to
suggest symmetry. She found:
• Only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework.
• Only 25% had a high level of participation in childcare
Later research by Boulton (1983)
supported Oakley, she found that
fewer than 20% of husbands had a
major role in childcare. She
criticises Y&W for focusing on tasks
as oppose to responsibilities - a
father may help with specific tasks
but the responsibility was almost
always the mothers.
Warde &Hetherington (1993) found that sex
typing of domestic tasks remained strong. E.g.
women are 30x more likely to wash up, whilst men
are 3x more likely to wash the car. Generally they
found that men would only carry out ‘female’ tasks
when their partner was not around. But they did
find evidence to suggest a New Man was evident in
younger men particularly if they came from a home
where joint conjugal roles were present.
THE IMPACT OF PAID WORK
Most women in Oakley’s study in the 1970s were housewives, now
more women go out to work (either part time or full time), so does
this mean that there is a more equal division of labour (march of
progress) or are women now facing a “dual burden” (Feminists)?
Finances and inewuality
RESOURCES AND DECISION MAKING IN
HOUSEHOLDS
We have discussed how there is inequality in who does what in the
home, there is also inequality in who gets what in the home - in other
words how the family’s resources are shared out between men and wome
This is linked to who controls the family’s income and who has the power to make decisions
about how it is spent.
Finances - Pahl & Vogler (1993) identify that there are
two main types of control over family income:
The allowance system - where men give their wives an
allowance out of which they budget to meet the family’s
needs.
Sociologist pooling
Pooling - where both partners have access to income and
joint responsibility for expenditure e.g. a joint bank account
Pooling is on the increase and the most common money management system
Decision-making
over resources. However where pooling income is controlled by the husband this tends to give
him more power in financial decisions. There is the assumption that pooling indicates more
equality in decision-making and control
found when studying professional couples that the important decisions
were usually taken by the man alone or jointly and his career usually took priority when
deciding whether to move house for a new job.
Edgell (1980) found that that there were 3 types of decisions that were made:
a) Very important decisions - these involved finance e.g. moving house and usually
taken by the husband or jointly but with the husband having the final say.
b) Important decisions - e.g. children’s education, holidays etc. usually taken jointly
seldom the wife alone.
c) Less important decisions - e.g. home décor, clothes, food usually made by the wife.
The reason why men tend to make the decisions is they earn more. But there is some
evidence to suggest a shift towards greater-equality significantly so when women are high
earners. This offers a material explanation to the inequality, however feminists would argue
there is a cultural explanation for the differences - inequalities in decision making reflect the
patriarchal nature of society where we have deeply ingrained gender scripts which dictate the
male as the decision maker.
However Pahl notes just pooling money doesn’t mean there is equality, we must understand
who controls the money and if both partners contribute equally. Likewise keeping money
separately doesn’t necessarily always mean inequality; cohab couples are less likely to poo
money yet are more likely to share domestic tasks than married couples.
Instead we need to understand what the meaning of money for couples is, Nyman
(2003) argues money has no fixed automatic meaning and different couples define it
in different ways.
A ‘personal life’ perspective on money
This focuses on the me
Dey, for example in one
elationahis and nannor dantellina tha mando macho a dian findaait, bars do far
Domestic abuse/ home office
The Home Office (2013):
“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”
This can include psychological, physical, sexual, financial and emotional violence
and abuse
There is a view that domestic violence is the behaviour of a few disturbed or sick individuals
and that its causes are psychological rather than social.
How do sociologist challenge the home office view in domestic shuse
But sociologists challenge this view,
based on the following evidence:
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS FAR TOO WIDESPREAD to simply be the work of few
disturbed individuals. The Crime Survey (2013) found that 2 million people reported having
been victims of domestic abuse (1.2 million women, 800,000 men).
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE DOES NOT OCCUR RANDOMLY instead it follows
particular social patterns and these patterns have social causes. The most striking pattern is
that it is mainly violence by men against women. 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence
at some point, two women are killed each week by a former or current partner.
Do ash and Dobash
Dobash & Dobash (2007) found that marriage legitimates domestic violence against women
by conferring power and authority on husbands and dependency on wives. Violence often
occurred when husbands felt their authority was being challenged.
True extent of domestic violence
Official statistics often understate the true extent of domestic violence based on two reasons:
1. 2. Victims are often unwilling to report the offence to the police, a woman on average
suffers 35 assaults before making a report. They often believe it is not a matter for the
police or that it is too trivial or have fear of reprisal.
Police and prosecutors may be reluctant to investigate or prosecute. Cheal
(1991) states that often the police and other state agencies are not prepared to get
involved in family life, they make 3 assumptions about family life:
a) The family is a private sphere so access by the state should be limited
b) The family is a good thing and so agencies tend to neglect the darker side of
family life
c) Individuals are free agents so it is assumed women would leave if it was that
bad. However this is not true as violence is often coupled with economic power
and women are unable to leav
