families and households: couples

The domestic division of labour
1. Functionalists view
  1. Parsons - expressive and instrumnetal roles
    1. Parsons argues that the gender division of labour is functional for the family as it is biologically based.
  2. Bott talks about the segregated and conjugal roles
    1. segregated - sharp division between the male breadwinner and the female homemaker and they spend their leisure time separately
      1. conjugal - involves couples sharing domestic tasks and leisure time
  3. Willmott and Young talk about the symmetrical family where roles are similar and more equal.
    1. There are trends to support this claim, for example; more women now go out to work, men help with housework and childcare (new man), and couples spend their leisure time together and men have become more home centred and the family has become more privatised.
      1. This is because of higher living standards, labour saving devices, better housing, women working and smaller families.
2. Feminist view
  1. Feminists reject the March of Progess view as suggested by Young and Willmott and they see the family as being patriarchal, not symmetrical and equal.
    1. Oakley found not evidence of symmetry, she found that men did help, but it was far from equal.
  2. Boulton argues that we need to look who is responsible for the tasks and not just who performs them.
    1. Women carry a dual burden and a triple shift - this was said by Duncombe and Marsden
      1. Braun et al found most fathers were background fathers, they held a provider ideology and are always the breadwinner, not the primary carer.
Explaining the gender division of labour
1. 1. the cultural or ideological explanantion
  1. Patriarchal cultural norms shape gender roles, women perform more domestic labour because this is what society expects and has socialised them to do.
  2. Equality will only be achieved when attitudes, values and expectations, role models and socialisation change.
    1. Gershuny argues that couples are adapting to women working full time establishing a new norm for men doing more domestic work.
    2. Kan found that younger males do more domestic work
2. 2. the material or economic explanation
  1. women earn less than men so it is economically rational for them to do more domestic labour whilst men spend more time making money.
    1. If women earn as much as their partners we should see couples doing equal amounts of domestic work.
      1. Arber and Ginn found better paid women could buy in products and services e.g childcare rather than carrying out the domestic tasks themselves.
        Ramos found that where the woman is the full time breadwinner and the man is unemployed they do equal amounts of domestic labour.

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