Sociology As1 - Families & Household

Front 1

Parsons : Instrumental & Expressive roles

Back 1

Husband = Instrumental role. Towards achieving and provide for family financially. Breadwinner.

Wife = Expressive. Towards primary socialisation of children and meeting emotional needs of family.

Front 2

Bott : Segregated and Joint conjugal roles.

Back 2

Segregated = Couple have separate roles so male breadwinner and female carer/homemaker.

Joint = Couple share tasks such as housework and childcare.

Front 3

Young & Willmott Symmetrical family.

Back 3

See family as gradually improving for all its members, becoming equal and democratic. Symmetrical meaning more similar in the roles of family. Women go to work, men now work with housework and children. Couples now spend leisure time together.

In as study by Y&W symmetrical families are more familiar in young couples and were living at a distance from extended families. This is down to factors such as changes in women position, geographical mobility, new technology and higher standards of living.

Front 4

Feminist view of housework.

Back 4

Argue little has changed, men and women still remain unequal. Women are still doing most of the house work and society is male dominated.

Ann Oakley argues with Y&W saying that husband only helped their wives only one a week.

Boulton found that 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare and that father might only help specific tasks and it was always the mother responsible for security and well being of the child.

Warde & Hetherington research that shows men would only carry out domestic tasks when their wives weren't around to do them.

Front 5

Oakley : rise of housewife role.

Back 5

The role becoming more dominant for the married women. 19th century labour force had separated the paid work from the home and as women were excluded from working and confined at home with sole responsibility for housework and children. This forced women to be more dependent on men.

Front 6

Gershuny : Trend towards equality. (Paid work)

Back 6

Women working full time is leading to a more equal division of labour at home. He fund men doing more house work and tend to take responsibility of tasks. He found when women worked full time. The longer the wife had been in paid work, the more work men did and couples with more equal relationship were likely to share work themselves. Crompton says women's earning power increases so men do more work at home.

Front 7

Silver & Schor : Commercialisation of housework.

Back 7

Goods and services that housewives previously had to produce now are being mass produced and supplied by supermarkets, food outlets and so on. Ready meals all reduce the domestic labour needed. Women working means they can buy these services. S&S argue burden of housework on women has decreased. Critique is poorer women can't buy these services and if commercialisation reduced the housework, this don't NOT prove couples are sharing chores equally.

Front 8

Dual burden.

Back 8

Women have acquired dual burden of paid work and unpaid housework. Men benefit both from women's earnings and domestic labour.

Ferri & Smith find that increased employment of women outside the home has had little impact on domestic division of labour.

Morris find that men lost their masculine role as result of becoming unemployed saw domestic work of women and avoided it. But it is argued by Ramos where male matches that of the partner when the partner is at work.

Ginn finds that many are trapped in a circle of low paid and part time employment.

Front 9

Emotion work.

Back 9

Work's main feature of management of emotions. Seen as 'labour of love' because it involves caring for other members of the family. Marsden argues that women are expected to do triple shift that includes emotional work.

Front 10

Gender scripts.

Back 10

Dunne argues division of labour continues because of the ingrained gender scripts. Compared to hetero relationships, they describe their relationship as a equal and share housework and childcare equally & give equal importance to both partners careers.

Weeks argues same sex relationships offer greater responsibilities because division of labour is open.

Front 11

Summary.

Back 11

Women being in paid work leads to more equality in division of labour.

Many feminists argue that women still shoulder a dual or triple burden even if men are doing more at home.

Feminists argue that root of the problem is patriarchy that society shape the roles of men and women to perform. Patriarchy ensures that women earn less at work and so have less bargaining power in the home and in the workplace so division of labour remain unequal.