FAMILIES & HOUSEHOLDS - CONJUGAL ROLES Flashcards
key words
CONJUGAL ROLES:
->the domestic division of labour between husband and wife
->splitting up tasks between partners
SEGREGATED CONJUGAL ROLES:
->partners perform separate and distinct tasks
->this can include separate leisure activities
->eg. “breadwinner” and “home-maker” roles
JOINT CONJUGAL ROLES:
->relatively little division of labour
->sharing of household tasks, childcare, and leisure time
THE INSTRUMENTAL ROLE IN A MARRIAGE:
->traditionally male role
->breadwinner role
->implies less involvements in childcare, and more involvement in paid work
THE EXPRESSIVE ROLE IN A MARRIAGE:
->traditionally female role
->caring, nurturing and supportive role
->implies a “natural” tendency for women to be involved in caring activities due to their biology
willmott and young (1873) “the symmetrical family”
->Willmott and Young suggested we now have a “symmetrical family”, meaning that a family divides all responsibilities equally between partners
->in the 1960s, work hours were reduced for men, families were becoming smaller and fewer extended families leads to more nuclear families and a stronger conjugal bond
ann oakley (1974) “the sociology of housework”
->she disputed W&Y’s claims of a “symmetrical family”, instead describing their analysis of “help from husbands” as a “loose notion”
->she said that their figure of 72% of married men claiming to “help their partners at least once a week” exaggerated the degree of symmetry because they may count “helping” as doing one or two tasks, still leaving an unfair workload for their wives
->she compared being a housewife to working in a factory as the work is repetitive and monotonous, and it’s low status with no pay
arlie hochschild (1989) “the second shift”
->Hochschild worked in America and surveyed 145 dual-income married couples (mainly middle class and white)
->when men were asked about their typical day, 46% made no reference to their home or domestic matters
->she found that, although 70% shared roles “reasonably closely”, as many as 33% did “little or nothing to help”
->Hochschild’s “second shift” refers to the household and childcare duties that follow a day’s work for pay outside the home
duncombe and marsden (1993) “the triple shift”
->D&M further added to Hochschild’s work, adding “emotion work”, making the “second shift” into the “triple shift”, after they examined the implications of this ideas for relationships between heterosexual partners
->D&M claim that “emotion work” is gendered:
–>many women expressed dissatisfaction with their partner’s emotional input into their relationship and family
–>many of the women in the study were holding the relationship together by doing the crucial emotion work
->women’s emotion work demonstrates “a major dimension of gender inequality in a couple’s relationship”
->a summary of their findings suggested that:
–>emotion work is necessary for all healthy relationships
–>women were doing most, if not all, of the emotion work
–>men didn’t see emotion work as necessary
–>with married women increasingly having paid employment, they can end up performing a TRIPLE SHIFT (paid employment, housework, and emotion work)
->Bernard (1982) said that married women experienced “emotional loneliness”:
–>several men focused on their paid employment and were unwilling to express feelings of love for their partner, and were reluctant to discuss their feelings more generally
–>many men did not believe that there was a problem and did not acknowledge that emotion work needed to be done to make the relationship work
–>this leads to many women feeling “emotionally lonely”
statistics
-according to the ONS, women did almost 60% more of the unpaid work, on avg, than man
-women were averaging 45 more daily minutes of chores
-institute for public policy research, “thinktank”, shows that8/10 married women do more household chores
-1/10 married men do equal amounts of cleaning and washing as his wife
-ONS found that lockdown led to a 58% increase in time spent on childcare
-in 2015, men were spending 39% of the time that women spent on childcare
-women were doing 44% more housework in March and April, down from 2014-16, but by September, women were spending 64% more time on household responsibilities
