Power and control in the family

1. Conjugal roles

   Nota:

   • The roles played by a male and female partner in marriage or in a cohabiting couple.
   1. Segregated conjugal roles

      Nota:

      • A clear division and separation between the roles of male and female partners in a marriage or in a cohabiting couple.
   2. Joint conjugal roles

      Nota:

      • Roles in marriage or in a cohabiting couple where male and female partners share domestic tasks, childcare, decision-making and income earning.
2. Functionalist view: Talcott parsons
   1. Instrumental role

      Nota:

      • The provider/breadwinner role in the family, often associated by functionalists with men’s role in family life.
   2. Expressive role

      Nota:

      • The nurturing, caring and emotional role, often linked by functionalists to women’s biology and seen as women’s ‘natural’ role in the family.
3. The symmetrical family

   Nota:

   • A family where the roles of husband and wife or cohabiting partners have become more alike (symmetrical) and equal.
4. Domestic labour

   Nota:

   • Unpaid housework, including cooking, cleaning, child-care and looking after the sick and elderly.
   1. The feminist view of housework
   2. The rise of the housewife role
   3. The commercialisation of housework
   4. The dual burden

      Nota:

      • When a person is responsible for two jobs. Usually applied to women who are in paid work but also responsible for domestic labour.
      1. Triple shift

         Nota:

         • The three types of work which create a burden for women: paid work, domestic work and emotion work.
         1. Emotion work

            Nota:

            • The time and effort involved in thinking about and acting to produce the emotional well-being and happiness of others.

1. Power and decision-making
2. Power and money

Nota:

• Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, 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. The abuse can encompass, but is not limited to: psychological, physical, sexual, financial, emotional

1. Official statistics
2. Explanations
   1. Radical feminist

      Nota:

      • A feminist approach which focuses on the problem of patriarchy. For radical feminists, the main focus of research is on the problem of men and male-dominated society.
   2. Inequality and stress