Couples Flashcards
Distinguish between instrumental and expressive roles
Instrumental role:
- husband
- breadwinner
- geared towards achieving success at work so he can provide financially
Expressive role:
- wife
- full time housewife
- primary socialisation of children
- meets the emotional needs of the family
What are joint and segregated conjugal roles and who coined the term?
BOTT Said that
- segregated conjugal roles are where the wife and husband have separate roles; the female homemaker and the male breadwinner. Spend leisure time separately.
- joint conjugal roles are where the couple shares tasks like housework and childcare and spend their leisure time together.
State three features of symmetrical families and who identified them
Young and wilmott take a march of progress view and say that there has been a trend towards the symmetrical family where
- women go to work
- men help with housework and childcare
- both spend leisure time together
What is the feminist view of housework?
Feminists reject the march of progress view and argue that little had changed; inequality remains due to the patriarchal society.
Oakley says Young and Wilmott’s claims about the symmetrical are exaggerated. Her study found that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework and only 25% had a high level of participation in childcare.
What is the march of progress view on whether couples are becoming more equal?
The MOP view argued that men are becoming more involved in housework and childcare just as women are becoming more involved in paid work.
Gershuny: time studies showed that women who work full time do less domestic work than other women.
What do feminists think about whether couples are becoming more equal?
- women working ≠ greater equality in the DOL
- The British social attitudes survey shows that women overall did twice as much housework and caring for the family than men
- Allan: women’s tasks are less intrinsically satisfying
How does taking responsibility for children work in couples?
- Boulton: although fathers perform specific childcare tasks, it’s usually the mother who takes responsibility for the child’s security and well-being
+ Ferri & Smith: fathers take responsibility for childcare in less than 4% of homes - Hochschild: women have to perform emotion work where they manage the emotions and feelings of family members
- Duncombe & Marsden: women have a triple shift of housework, paid work and emotion work
How does taking responsibility for quality time work in couples?
- Southerton: mothers have to coordinate, schedule and manage the family’s quality time but changes have led to people’s time being more fragmented. While men have uninterrupted blocks of leisure time, women’s leisure time is interrupted by childcare.
What is the cultural explanation for the gender DOL with examples
- The idea that the DOL is determined by patriarchal norms
- Evidence:
- Gershuny: couples whose parents had a more equal relationship are more likely to share housework equally
- Man yee kan: younger men are doing more domestic work
What is the material explanation for the gender DOL with examples
- The idea that women earning less than men makes it economically rational for women to do more housework and men do the paid work
- Evidence:
- Kan: for every £10,000 more a woman earns per year she does 2 less hours of housework per week
- Ramos: where the woman is the full time breadwinner and the man is unemployed, he does as much domestic labour as she does
x Crompton: in 7/8 households, men earn more than women so there can’t be a more equal DOL if it depends on economic equality between the sexes.
What is money management like for couples?
Pahl and Vogler identify two types of control over family income:
- the allowance system
Men give their wives an allowance to budget family needs.
- pooling
Both partners have equal access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure.
What is decision making like for couples?
Edgell’s study found
- very important decisions were made by the man alone
- important decisions were made jointly
- less important decisions were made by the wife alone
This is because men earn more.
x Laurie and Gershuny: by 1995, 70% of couples said they had an equal say in decisions.
What is the personal life perspective on money?
- focuses on the meanings couples give to who controls the money
- Weeks et al found that the typical pattern was to pool some money for household spending but have separate accounts for personal spending; co-independence
- personal life theorists say we should look at the personal meanings of the actors involved
What is domestic violence?
The Home Office describes DV as:
Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.
Do sociologists agree that domestic violence is the behaviour of a few sick individuals?
No. They challenge this view for 2 reasons:
- DV is far too widespread to be simply the work of a few disturbed people. The Crime survey for England and Wales found that two million people reported having been victims of domestic abuse during the previous year
- DV doesn’t occur randomly but follows social patterns which have social causes. Coleman and Osbourne found that two women a week are killed by a partner or ex partner.
