Couples Flashcards
What points can be made about the domestic division of labour?
Parsons: Instrumental and expressive roles
Joint and segregated roles
Symetrical family
Feminist view
What roles did Parsons come up with?
Instrumental
Expressive
What were Parsons instrumental and expressive roles?
Instumental: Husband is the breadwinner
Exprssive: Wife is homemaker
Based on positive biological differences
How is Parsons critisized?
Division is not benificial to everyone
Young and Willmott: The family is changing as women go out to work and men take a bigger responsability with childcare
How do Young and Willmott critisize Parsons?
The family is changing as women go out to work and men take a bigger responsability with childcare
Who came up with Joint and Segregated roles
Bott
What are segregated conjugal roles?
Couples have seperate roles where the women is the homemaker and the man is the breadwinner. They have seperate leisure activities
What are joint conjugal roles?
The couple share tasks such as childcare and cleaning. They tend to spend leisure time together
Who came up with the idea of the symmetrical family?
Willmott and Young
What is the symmetrical family?
Family is improving and becoming more democratic as women go out to work and men help more with childcare
Where is the symmetrical family most common?
Young middle-class families
What recent social changes have helped lead to the rise of the symmetrical family?
Women going out to work
Couples being more georgaphically mobile
New technology meaning housework is less time consuming
How does Oakley critisize Willmott and Young’s idea of the symmetrical family?
They exaggerated their claims as men ‘helping’ their wives doesn’t show true equality.
What is the feminist perspective on the division of labour?
Women still do all the work and are more likely to take overall responsability for their child’s care.
25% of fathers were highly active in childcare and only share in the positive aspects so the mothers lose out on rewarding time with the children
According to feminists, what percentage of fathers are highly active in childcare?
25%
What evidence is there to support the march of progress view that couples are becoming more equal?
Working women do less work than housewives so Gershuny thinks that women working leads to a more equal division of labour
Social Attitudes Survey 2013 found less people support traditional gender roles
How does Gershuny support the march of progress view?
Women working leads to a more equal division of labour
How does the British Social Attitudes Survey (2013) support the march of progress view?
Less people support traditional gender roles
In 1984, 45% of men supported it but in 2013 it was 13%
Acording to the British Social Attitudes Survey what percentage of men supported traditional gender roles in 1984?
45%
Acording to the British Social Attitudes Survey what percentage of men supported traditional gender roles in 2013?
13%
What points can be made when looking at the feminist view of if couples are becoming more equal?
Taking responsability for children
Taking responsability for quality time
What is the feminist view of couples becoming more equal?
The British Social Attitudes Survey also shows men do 8 hours of housework a week while women do 13
60% of women think the division of labour is unjust
What parcentage of women think that the division of labour is unjust?
60%
What evidence to feminists give than women take more responability for childcare?
Dex and Ward: Less than 1% took responsability to care for sick children
Hochschild: Women have a triple shift
What are the three parts of the triple shift?
Housework
Pair work
Emotion work
What do Dex and Ward argue about responsability for childcare?
Less than 1% took responsability to care for sick children
Who takes responsability for organising quality time?
Women
What are the differences in men and women’s leisure time according to Gershuny?
Men take their time in ininterrupted blocks while women take theirs around their children
Who came up with the cultural and material explanations for the division of labour?
Crompton and Lyonette
What is the cultural explanation for behaviour?
Influanced by patriarchial values where women do more housework because they have been socilised to think that is expected of them
What is the material explanation?
Women earn less so must contribute in other ways
What shift in attitudes was found by Man Yee Kan?
Young men do more housework than their fathers showing a generational shift in attitudes
What shift in attitudes was shown in the British Social Survey of 2013?
Less than 10% of those under 35 agree with a traditional division of labour while those over 60 have a 30% agreement
What evidence supports the material explanation?
Arber and Ginn
Sullivan
What evidence to Arber and Ginn have to support the material explanation?
Middle class women were more likely to afford childcare and labour saving divices so spent less time doing the tasks themselves
What evidence to Sullivan have to support the material explanation?
The biggest difference in how much domestic labour someone does depends on if they work full time or part time
What evidence do Barrett and MacIntosh have that there is inequality with resources in relationships?
Men gain more from women’s domestic labour than they give back in support
Financial support is normally conditional
Men make decisions about spending
What did Kempson find about inequality with resources?
Women in low income families ignore their own needs to spend money on their children. Even in good incomes, women can still live in poverty as they are shared unequally
Who found the main two types of money management?
Pahl and Vogler
What are the main two types of money management?
The allowance system
Pooling
What is the allowance system of money management?
The husband gives his wife an allowance that they have to budget to for meeting the families needs. The money spends any extra money on himself
What is the pooling system of money management?
Both partners have equal access to income and joint responsability over expenditure
What was Hardill’s study into decision making in couples?
30 duel-earner couples in high paid jobs
Important decisions were either made by the man or jointly
What was Edgeil’s study into decision making in couples?
Very important decisions were made jointly but with the man having the final say
Important decisions were made jointly but sometimes by the wife alone
Less important decisions were made by the wife
Why does Edgeil argue that men make the majority of financial decisions?
They earn more
What is the material explanation for decision making?
Laurie and Gershuny argue that the more women earn, the more equal the relationship
Why does Pahl say the meaning of money is more important than the system used?
Pooling doesn’t show equality if one person contributes more than the other
Keeping finances seperate may not show inequality as it may be a way to stay independant
What did Smart find about the meaning of money in gay relationships?
No meaning attatched to who controlls the money
