Families and Households- Roles and Relationships Within the Family Flashcards
What are conjugal roles?
The roles of husband and wife within the home
What did Bott study?
How jobs and roles within the family were allocated to men and women in modern industrial Britain
What are segregated conjugal roles?
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
What are joint conjugal roles?
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
What did Willmott and Young study?
Changing structure of British family from extended to nuclear
What did Willmott and Young predict?
Equal and shared responsibilities would be the future norm for British families
How did Oakley criticise Willmott and Young?
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
What did Edgell do?
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
What did Oakley find?
Women took on a dual burden of paid jobs and still keeping the traditional responsibilities for home and children
What did Dunne find in her study of lesbian households?
Distribution of responsibilities such as childcare and housework tended to be equal between partners
Why is it important to look at a large sample?
More representative
What was the British Social Attitudes Survey?
A large-scale study that questioned about 3000 people about gender roles
What is emotional work in a family?
Reacting and responding to other family members’ emotions, alleviating pain and distress, and responding to and managing anger and frustration
What did Bell suggest?
There is an ‘economy of emotion’ within all families and that running this economy is the responsibility of women
What did Duncombe and Marsden find?
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
What does Oakley think about the role of the housewife?
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
Why was the role of the housewife created for married women?
As they were not allowed to work in factories
Why did domestic work came to be seen as naturally the role of women?
The cultural values that said women should be in charge of housework were so dominant
What did Edgell find about decision-making?
Men had decision-making control over things both husband and wife saw as important, whilst women had control over minor decisions
What did Pahl find about decision-making?
Most common form of financial management was husband-controlled pooling- money being shared but husband has the dominant role in how it’s spent
What did Weeks find?
Couples tend to pool money in a joint account while keeping some money back in a personal account
What did Smart find?
Same-sex couples don’t link control over money with inequality in the relationship and organise what is best for them as a couple
Why do functionalists say that men and women still largely perform different tasks and roles in the family?
Because it’s the most effective way of keeping society running smoothly
How do Marxists interpret the fact that men and women have different roles?
As evidence of the power of capitalism to control family life- men and women still have unequal roles because capitalism works best that way
What does the feminist perspective say about inequality in household roles?
It demonstrates inequality in power between men and women- a patriarchal society will produce unequal conjugal relationships
How is child abuse a form of power?
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
Why is it less likely for children to report abuse?
Families are private and separate from the rest of society
How have social policies been adapted to give some protection to children?
The Children Act 1989 was set up so the state can intervene in families if social workers are concerned about children’s safety
What percentage does the Home Office estimate that violent crime in the UK is domestic violence?
16%
What did a 2012-13 survey find about domestic violence?
Non-physical abuse was more common than physical abuse
What did Dobash and Dobash find about domestic violence?
The police didn’t usually record violent crime by husbands against their wives
What do radical feminists say about domestic violence?
It is a form of patriarchal control
How does the social climate help to maintain the domestic violence situation?
By making women feel ashamed and stigmatised if they talk about violence
How are radical feminists criticised for their view of domestic violence?
- Overemphasises place of domestic violence in family life
- Presents men as all-powerful and women as totally powerless
