Families and Households- Roles and Relationships Within the Family

Question 1

What are conjugal roles?

Answer 1

The roles of husband and wife within the home

Question 2

What did Bott study?

Answer 2

How jobs and roles within the family were allocated to men and women in modern industrial Britain

Question 3

What are segregated conjugal roles?

Answer 3

Husbands and wives lead separate lives with clear and distinct responsibilities within the family- man goes out to work and does DIY, woman stays home looks after children and provides emotional support

Question 4

What are joint conjugal roles?

Answer 4

Husband and wife roles are more flexible and shared, with less defined tasks for each, usually leisure time is shared, responsibility for making decisions is also shared

Question 5

What did Willmott and Young study?

Answer 5

Changing structure of British family from extended to nuclear

Question 6

What did Willmott and Young predict?

Answer 6

Equal and shared responsibilities would be the future norm for British families

Question 7

How did Oakley criticise Willmott and Young?

Answer 7

Their study only required men to do around the house to qualify as having joint roles- overlooked the amount of time spent on housework and it was actually pretty rare for men to do a lot of housework

Question 8

What did Edgell do?

Answer 8

Tested Willmott and Young’s theory and found none of his sample families had joint conjugal roles in relation to housework however did find increased sharing of childcare

Question 9

What did Oakley find?

Answer 9

Women took on a dual burden of paid jobs and still keeping the traditional responsibilities for home and children

Question 10

What did Dunne find in her study of lesbian households?

Answer 10

Distribution of responsibilities such as childcare and housework tended to be equal between partners

Question 11

Why is it important to look at a large sample?

Answer 11

More representative

Question 12

What was the British Social Attitudes Survey?

Answer 12

A large-scale study that questioned about 3000 people about gender roles

Question 13

What is emotional work in a family?

Answer 13

Reacting and responding to other family members’ emotions, alleviating pain and distress, and responding to and managing anger and frustration

Question 14

What did Bell suggest?

Answer 14

There is an ‘economy of emotion’ within all families and that running this economy is the responsibility of women

Question 15

What did Duncombe and Marsden find?

Answer 15

Women in families are often required to do the ‘triple shift’- childcare, paid employment and emotional work, married women were happier when their husbands shared some of the burden of emotional work, but women have the main responsibility of managing the whole family’s emotions

Question 16

What does Oakley think about the role of the housewife?

Answer 16

It was socially constructed by the social changes of the Industrial Revolution, when people started going to work in factories instead of working at home

Question 17

Why was the role of the housewife created for married women?

Answer 17

As they were not allowed to work in factories

Question 18

Why did domestic work came to be seen as naturally the role of women?

Answer 18

The cultural values that said women should be in charge of housework were so dominant

Question 19

What did Edgell find about decision-making?

Answer 19

Men had decision-making control over things both husband and wife saw as important, whilst women had control over minor decisions

Question 20

What did Pahl find about decision-making?

Answer 20

Most common form of financial management was husband-controlled pooling- money being shared but husband has the dominant role in how it’s spent

Question 21

What did Weeks find?

Answer 21

Couples tend to pool money in a joint account while keeping some money back in a personal account

Question 22

What did Smart find?

Answer 22

Same-sex couples don’t link control over money with inequality in the relationship and organise what is best for them as a couple

Question 23

Why do functionalists say that men and women still largely perform different tasks and roles in the family?

Answer 23

Because it’s the most effective way of keeping society running smoothly

Question 24

How do Marxists interpret the fact that men and women have different roles?

Answer 24

As evidence of the power of capitalism to control family life- men and women still have unequal roles because capitalism works best that way

Question 25

What does the feminist perspective say about inequality in household roles?

Answer 25

It demonstrates inequality in power between men and women- a patriarchal society will produce unequal conjugal relationships

Question 26

How is child abuse a form of power?

Answer 26

A parent or carer is able to abuse a child by manipulating the responsibilities and trust which go along with the role of a parent or carer

Question 27

Why is it less likely for children to report abuse?

Answer 27

Families are private and separate from the rest of society

Question 28

How have social policies been adapted to give some protection to children?

Answer 28

The Children Act 1989 was set up so the state can intervene in families if social workers are concerned about children’s safety

Question 29

What percentage does the Home Office estimate that violent crime in the UK is domestic violence?

Answer 29

16%

Question 30

What did a 2012-13 survey find about domestic violence?

Answer 30

Non-physical abuse was more common than physical abuse

Question 31

What did Dobash and Dobash find about domestic violence?

Answer 31

The police didn’t usually record violent crime by husbands against their wives

Question 32

What do radical feminists say about domestic violence?

Answer 32

It is a form of patriarchal control

Question 33

How does the social climate help to maintain the domestic violence situation?

Answer 33

By making women feel ashamed and stigmatised if they talk about violence

Question 34

How are radical feminists criticised for their view of domestic violence?

Answer 34

• Overemphasises place of domestic violence in family life

- Presents men as all-powerful and women as totally powerless