Couples

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  • Couples
    • Instrumental and Expressive roles
      • A theory by Parsons that stated that naturally men preformed the instrumental roles (breadwinner, provide and protect) whilst the women were more emotional and were the home-maker, so preformed the expressive roles
        • Feminists argue that this theory was created for the sole purpose of benefiting men (getting away from work they would prefer not to do)
        • Post-Modern feel it is outdated and there is now a division of labour with both parties preforming both roles
    • Joint and segregated conjugal roles
      • A theory by Bott with a segregated role being two distinguished roles between a couple, the man is the breadwinner and the woman is the home-maker. Joint is where they equally share their roles
        • This has only really happened in modern middle-class families
    • The Symmetrical family
      • A theory by Young and Willmott, which is the "march to progress" view. Men help out at home, women work and couples spend their leisure time together, it is more home-centred
        • This is because women less co-dependant and more individual, their position has changed
        • New technology has led to less intensive and longer hours at work
        • Higher standards of living
    • A Feminist view of housework
      • They reject the "march to progress" view, women still do most of the housework and society is still male-dominated. Proof of this: a survey found that men only help once a week with the house work, on average
    • The rise of the housewife role
      • Oakley found that housework has become the dominant role for married women, and the role of women is a social construct rather than "natural" as Parsons thinks
    • The trend towards equality
      • Gershuny argues that wives who worked full-time did less domestic work, the fall of housework between working women and non-working women was 9-11%
    • The commercialisation of housework
      • Housework has become "commercialised" meaning the development of technology and ready meals has meant women can have more time to work or leisure time - the burden has decreaed
    • The dual burden
      • This term means that women now have to work and do the housework and in fact it has just meant double the work for women as men still don't help with the housework
        • If a husbadn is unemplyed he will tend to do more of the housework
        • The family is still patriarchal are men benefit from all the work women do but not the women to the men so it isn't fair
        • Little evidence that the "new man" actually does any housework
    • Emotion work
      • Emotional work including looking after sick children (limiting days at work) is in almost all cases given to the women to do and this could be seen as the triple burden, where women do the housework, the emotional work and do paid work at the same time

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