Couples

Husband (breadwinner) = instrumental role

- achieving sucess at work = providing for the family financially

Wife (homemaker) = expressive role

- primary socialisation of children, meeting family's emotional needs

Division of labour is based on biological differences, women 'natuarally' suited to nurtering role and men the provide.

Critisisms

- Young & Willmott- men now taking greater share in domestic tasks & more wives becoming wage earners

- Fems- rejects the divison is labour is naural and it only benefits men

Segregated conjugal roles - couples have separate role, (breadwinner and homemaker). Leisure activities are sparate

Joint conjugal roles - comples share tasks (housework and childcare). Spend leisure time together

Young&Willmott

WC families in 1950's London. Males=breadwinners and played little part in home life. Spent leisure time with workmates in pubs and working mens clubs. Women=full-time housewives, housework and childcare, helped by female relatives, limited leisure time was spent with female kin.

Symmetrical family= one in which roles of husbands and wives are more similar

-women go to work (might be part time rather than full time)

-men now help with housework and childcare

-couples spend leisure time together 

Young&Willmott- symmetrical family more common in younger couples, geographically and socially isolated and the affluent (better off). Rise in symmetrical N= rise in major social changes:

- Changes in women's position (married women going to work)

-Geographical mobility (more couples living away from communities they grew up in)

-New technology (and labour-saving devices)

-Higher standards of living

Little has changed:men and women remain unequal within the family

Oakley reject symmetrical family- taking kids for walk&making breakfast on one occasion isnt enough evidence.

Oakley- 15%of husbands has high level participation in housework and 25%in childcare

Father would play role as 'taking an interest' by playing with them in an evening and taking them out on a Sunday. Mothers lost reward of childcare,e.g. playing with kids and left with more time for housework.

Boulton- fewer that 20%of husbands had major role in childcare. Says Young&Willmott exaggerate men's contribution by looking at tasks invloved with childcare than responsibilities. 

Warde&Hetherington- sex-typing of domestic tasks remain strong.Men only carry out 'female'tasks when they werent around to do them. Did find some evidence of slight change of attitude among younger men. They no longer assume that women should do the housework, and more likely to think they were doing less than their fair share.

Men are becoming more involved in housework and childcare just as women are becoming more involved in paid work outside the home. 

Gershuny- women working in full time work leading to more equal division of labour in home. Women in full time work did less domestic work than others

Sullivan- trends towards women doing smaller share of domestic work and men doing more. Increase in number of couples with equal division of labour and that men were participating more traditional womens tasks.

British Social Attitudes survey- fall in number of people who think its the mans job to earn money and womans to look after home and family. 

-1984- 45%men and 41%women agreed with this view

-2012-13%men and 12%women agreed

Women going into paid work isnt leading to greater equality in division of domestic labour

Little sign of new man-equal share of housework and childcare, while women now carry a dual bruden

British Social Attitudes survey:

How much do men do?- 2012, men on average did 8 hours of housework a week&women did 13. Men spent 10 hours a week on care for family members&women 23. Women did twice as much as men, 60% of women felt division of labour was unjust because thye were doing more than their fair share.

Who does what?- women more likely to do laundry, care for sick family, shop for food, cleaning and cooking. Men more likely to do small repairs in house (Very similar to 1994)

Allan- suveys don't measure qualitative differences in tasks men and women perform. Women's taks such as washing and cleaning are less intrinsically satisfying.

Boulton- although fathers may help out by performing specific childcare tasks, usually mother takes responisibility for child's security and well-being

Ferri&Smith- fathers took responsibility for childcare in fewer than 4% of families

Dex&Ward- although fathers hae quite high involvement with their 3 year olds, when it came to caring for a sick child, 1% of fathers took main responsibility.

Braun,Vincent&Ball- 3/70 families main carer was father. Most were background fathers-helping with childcare was more about realtionship with their partner than responsibility towards child. Most fathers provided 'provider ideology' that their role was as breadwinners, while mothers saw themselves as primary carer. This was underpinned by ideas about 'intensive mothering' in the media telling women how to be good mother. 

Emotion work and triple shift-  Fems- women often required to perform emotional work (responsible for managing family's feelings and emotions (sibling rivalries) while also trying to control their own emotions. Duncombe&Marsden- women have to perform triple shift- housework, paid work and emotion work

Southerton- Womens responsibility is to coordinate, scheduling and managing family's quality time together

More difficult today because of social changes such as the emergence of the 24/7 society and flexible working patterns. Changes led to people's time being more fragmented and 'de-routinised'. 

Quality time is hard to achieve because working mothers have to juggle the demands of work and career, personal leisure time and family, while also time managing and coordinating their owwn and their families social activities.

Men and women have more or less equal amouts of leisure time but men are more likely to experience consolidated 'blocks' of interupted leisure time, whereas women's is often more likely to multi-task than men. This indicates that women are carrying dual burden in which they face an increased volume of activities to be managed.

Crompton&Lyonette unequal division of labour:

Cultural or ideological explaination of inequality

- division of labour is determined by patriarchal norms and values that shape that gender roles in our culture. Women perform more domestic labour simply because that is what society expects them to do and has socialised them to do

Material or economic explaination of inequality

- the fact that woman generally earn less than men means its economically rational for women to do more housework and childcare while men spent more time earning money

Equality will be achieved only when norms about gender roles change.

Gershuny- couples whose parents had more equal relationship are more likely to share housework equally themselves. This suggests 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- younger men do more domestic work. Most men claimed to do more housework than their father and most women claim to do less than their mother suggesting a generational shift in behaviour

British Social Attitudes survey- less than 10% of under 35's agreed with a traditional division of labour, against 30% of over 65's. Sugesting long-term change in norms, values and attitudes, reflecting changes in gender role socialisation of the younger age groups in favour of more equal relationship.

Dunne- lesbian couples had more symmetrical relationship because of the absence of traditional hetrosexual 'gener scripts' (norms that set out the different gender roles men and women are expected to play)

If women join labour force and earn as much as their partners, we should expect to see men and women dong more equal amounts of domestic work. 

Kan- For ever £10,000 q year more a women makes, she does 2 hours less housework a week

Arber&Ginn- better paid, middle-class women were more able to buy in commercially prodced products and services rather than having to spend time carrying out labour-intensive tasks themselves

Ramos-where the woman is full time breadwinner and man is unemployed, he does as much domestic labour as she does

Sullivan- working full-time rather than part-time make the biggest difference in terms of how much domestic work each partner does.

Some evidence women in paid work leads to more equality in home, especially if shes in paid work

Fems- women carry triple burden. Even if men are doing more in house home, domestic tasks remain gendered and women take responsibility for housework and childcare

Fems- root of problem is patriarchy as patriarchal norms and values shape society's expectations about domestic roles that men and women ought to perform. Patriarchy also ensures that women earn less at work and so have less bargaining power in the home. Until patriarchy is successfully challenged in the home and workplace domestic divison of labour will stay unequal

Barrett and McIntosh

-men gain far more from women's domestic work than they give back in financial support

- financial support that husbands give to wives is often unpredictable and comes wth 'strings' attached

- men usually make the decisions about spending on important items

Kempson-among low income families, women denied their own needs, seldom going out, and eating smaller portions of food or skipping meals to make ends meet

In many households, a woman has no entitlement to share of household resources in her own right. As a result, she is likely to see anything she spends on herself as money that ought to be spent on essentials for the children. Even in households with apparently adequate incomes, resources may be shared unequally, leaving women in poverty.

Pahl&Vogler(fems)- Two main types of control over family income:

-Allowance system- where man gave their wives an allowance out of which they have to budget to meet the family's needs, with man retaining any surplus income for himself

-Pooling- where both partners have access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure, e.g joint bank account

Pahl&Valger- even where there was major pooling, the men ususally made the major financial decisions

Hardill- 30 dual-career professional couples found that th eimportant decisions were usually taken either by the man alone or jointly and that is his career normally took priority when deciding whether to move house for a new job. 

Finch- observation that women's lives tend to be structured around their husbands careers

Edgell: study of professional couples found:

-very important decisions were either taken by husband alone or taken jointly but husband have final day

-important decisions(children's education, where to go on holiday) ususally taken jointly, and seldom by wife alone

-less important decision- (decor of house) usually made by wife

Woman earning less and being dependent on husbands have less in decision making

However...

Gershuny- by 1955, 70% of couples said they had equal say in decisions but women who earned more and well qualified more likely to have equal say

The menaings of money may have in relationships cannot be taken for granted

E.g. same sex couples often give different meaning to control of money. Smart- some gay men and lesbians attached no importance to who controlled money and perfectly happy to leave it to partners.

Weeks- typical pattern was pooling some money for household spendingm together with separate accounts for personal spending. This money management system is 'co-indeendence'- sharing but each partner remains in control over some money and a sense of independence.

Smart- greater freedom for same sex couples to do what suits them as a couple. Suggests that this may be because they dont enter relationships with same 'historical, gendered, herosexual baggage of cultural meaning around money'.

Any incidence or pattern of incidence of controlling,coersive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless gender or sexuality

-Domestic violence is far too widespread- to be simply the work of a few individuals. 

- Domestic violence doesnt occur randomly- but follows particular social patterns and these patterns have social causes. 

Dobash&Dobash- violent incidents could be set off by what husband saw as challenge to his authority

Walby&Allen- women were much more likely to be victims of mutiple incidents of abuse and sexual assult

Ansara&Hindin-women suffered more severe violence and control, with more psychological effects

Dar- can be difficult to count separate domestic violence incidents,because abuse may be continious or occur so often the victim cannot reliably count the instances.

Official statistcis understate true extent if problem for 2 reasons:

Victims may be unwilling to report to police. Yearnshire- on average women suffer 35 assults before making report. (the crime most less likely to be reported)

Police and prosecutors may be relucant to recors, investigate or procecute cases reported to them. Cheal- relcutance due to the fact that police and other state agencies are not prepared to become invloved with the family. They make 3 assumptions about family life:

- family is private sphere, soc access to it by state agescies should be limited

-family is a good think and so agencies tend to neglect the 'darker side' 

-individuals are free agents, so it assumes that is a women is being abused she is free to leave

Radical feminist- empathises the role of patriarchal ideas, cultural ideas and instituations

Materialist- empathisis economic factors such as lack of resources