Family and Households

Question 1

Functionalism: Murdock

Answer 1

4 Functions of the Family:

1. Stable Satisfaction of the Adult Sex Drive
2. Reproduction of the Next Generation
3. Socialisation of the young
4. Meeting Members economic needs

Question 2

Functionalism: Parsons

Answer 2

Functional Fit Theory:
A geographically mobile workforce
A Socially Mobile Workforce

When society inductrialised it lost some of its functions to institutions
Irreducible functions:
1. Primary Socialisation
2. Stabalisation of Adult Personalities

Question 3

Marxist Perspective

Answer 3

3 functions for fulfilling capitalism:

1. Inheritance of Property: Knowing who owns what, Engels argues monogamy increased with Industrialisation
2. Ideological Functions: Setting and upleeping ideas that justify inequality and maintain capitalism, Zaretsky says the idea that family offers a Haven away from the workplace is wrong it cannot meet everyones needs - e.g Domestic servitude of Women
3. Unit of Consumption: Buying products from capitalists for more than they spent producing them, by introducing advertising, pester power and making people feel guilty for not being up to date with the latest trends

Question 4

Criticism of Marxism

Answer 4

• Assuming Nuclear family is dominant
• Feminists: Emphasising class and ignoring the importance of Gender
• Functionalists: Ignoring benefits of the family

Question 5

Feminist Perspective

Answer 5

Liberal Feminists:

• Womens oppression is gradually being overcome through changing attitudes
• Full equality relys on further reforms and changing attitudes and socialisation patterns

Marxist Feminists:

• Main cause of Female oppression is not men but capitalism
• Women reproduce the labour force
• Women absorb anger - Ansley ‘Takers of Shit’
• Women are a reserve army of cheap labour

Radical Feminists:

• Men are the enemy
• The patriarchy is upheld by the family and marriage
• Political lesbianism
• Greer - Matrilocal households

Difference Feminists:
- All women have different experiences - e.g by regarding the family as purely negative white feminists neglect black womens experience of racial oppression

Question 6

Personal Life Perspectives

Answer 6

Bottoms up approach emphasising the meanings of each individual

Wider views of Family:

• Close relationships with friends
• Fictive Kin
• Gay and lesbian ‘Chosen Families’
• Relationships with dead relatives
• Pets - Tipper - Many children view pets as a family member

Donor concieved children

• Some define being a mum as the amount of time and effort put in to raising a child
• Difficult Questions surround certain situations e.g Lesbian couples may have concerns about equality between the genetic and non-gentic mothers

Question 7

Demography: Births

Answer 7

Total Fertility rate: 1964 - 2.95 / 2014 - 1.83

Reasons for decline in birth rate:

1. Changing womens positions
   - Legal equality with men - e.g Right to Vote
   - Increased educational opportunities - Most important according to Harper
   - More women in paid employement
   - Easier access to divorce
   - Easier access to Contraception
2. Decline in infant mortality
   - Harper - This leads to a fall in the birth rate and there is less need for families to have more children
   Reasons for this:
   - Improved housing and better sanitation
   - Better nutrition
   - Better knowledge of hygiene
   - Improved services for mothers and children
3. Children are now an economic liability
   - Laws now banning child labour
   - Change in what Children should expect from their parents
4. Child centeredness

Effects of changes in Fertility:
Tha family
- Smaller families mean women are more likely to be able to get a job

The dependency ration

• Reduces the ‘Burden of dependency’ on the working population
• Childhood may become lonlier as more children grow up without a sibling
• Fewer children could also mean they will become more valued

Public services

• Fewer schools, maternity and child health services may be needed
• The avergae age of the population is rising as there are more old people than young people

Question 8

Demography: Deaths

Answer 8

Death rate: 1900 - 19 / 2012 - 8.9

Reasons for the decline in death rate:
Improved nutrition
- Mckeown - Improved nutrition accounted for up to half the reduction in death rates
- Increased resistance to infection and increased chances of survival
- Does not explain why women live longer despite recieveing a smaller share of family food supplies

Medical imporvements

• Introduction of Antibiotics, immunisation, blood transfusion, improved maternity
• NHS established 1948

Smoking and Diet

• Obesity has replaced smoking as the new lifestyle epidemic
• Deaths from obseity have been kept low as a result of drug therapies

Public health measures

• More effective central and local government
• Drier, better ventilated, less crowded housing, purer drinking water, pasteurisation of milk, improved sewage systems

Other
- Decline in dangeroud manual jobs such as mining
- Smaller families reduce rate of transmission of infection
- Higher incomes
- Greater public knowledge of the causes of illnesses
Lifestyle changes

Life expectancy - 1900 - Males - 50 - Females - 57 / 2013 - Males - 90.7 - Females - 94

Reason for lower life expectancy in 1900: Many infants and children did not survive past the early years of life

• Women live longer than men in general
• Those living in the North tend to have a lower life expectancy than those in the south
• Walker - those in the poorest areas die on average 7 years earlier than those in the richest areas

Question 9

Demography: The ageing population

Answer 9

Causes:

1. Increasing life expectancy
2. Declining infant mortality
3. Declining Fertility

Effects:

• Older people consume a largel proportion of services such as health and social care
• Number of pensioners living alone has increased
• Increasing the dependency ratio - but we cannot assume old = economically dependent - Offset by declining number of dependent children

Ageism, modernity and postmodernity

• The old are largely excluded from paid work, leaving them economically dependent on their families or the state
• Phillipson - The old are no use to capitalism as they are no longer productive - meaning the state is less willing to support them
• Postmodernists argue the orderly stages of the life course have been broken down
• Hunt - Lifestyle and identity are no longer depndent on age
• The centrality of the media breaks down stigma surrounding Old Age
• The emphasis on surface features - Forming a surface to write our own identites
• Pilcher - inequalities such as class and gender still remain important
• Hirsch - A number of important social policies will need to change in order to combat issues faced by the ageing population - Mainly how to finance a longer period of old age

Question 10

Demography: Migration

Answer 10

Immigration
1900 - WW2
- The largest immigrant group were Irish
- Most Immigrants were White
1950s
- Black immigrants from the Caribbean
By 1980s
- Non-whites accounted for a quarter of all immigrants

Emigration

• Push factors - Economic recession and Unemployment
• Pull factors - Higher wages and better opportunities

Impact

• Births among non-UK born mothers are at 25% of all births in the UK
• Immigrants are generally younger, and produce more children - lowering the average age of the population
• More likely to be of working age - Lower dependency ratio
• The longer they stay the closer their fertility rate comes ot the national average

Question 11

Demography: Globalisation and Migration

Answer 11

Vertovec - Super-diversity - People come from a much wider range of countries even within a single ethnic group

Cohen:

• Citizens - Full citizenship rights - Since the 1970’s this has been made harder to aquire by the UK state
• Denizens - Priveleged foreign nationals welcomed by the state
• Helots - Exploited group, state and employers regard them as disposable units of labour power

Feminisation of migration

• Almost half of migrants are now women
• Ehrenreich and Hochschild - Care work, domestic work and sex work is most commmonly done by women from poor countries
• Global transfer of womens emotional labour

Eriksen - Globalisation has produced more diverse migrant patterns

Politicisation of migration:
Assimilationism
- Encouraged immigrants to adopt the language, values and customs of their host country
- However they may not be willing to drop their own culture
Multiculturalism
- Shallow diversity - Chicken tikka masala is accepted by the state
- Deep diversity - Arranged marriage and veiling of women is not accepted by the state - France made veiling the face illegal in 2010
- Castles - Assimilationist policies are counter-productive as they mark minorities as culturally backwards
Divided working-class
- May encourage workers to blame migrants for their social problems - scapegoating

Question 12

Divorce

Answer 12

Changing patterns

• Since the 1960’s there has been a great increase in the munber of divorces
• Since 1993 numbers ahve begun to fall again - Fewer people are choosing to marry in the first place
• 40% of all marriages end in divorce
• 65% of petitions for divorce come from women

Reasons for the increase in Divorce:

1. Change in Law
   - Equalising grounds for divorce between sexes - 1923
   - Widening ground for Divroce to ‘irretrievable breakdown’ - 1971 (2022 - No reason needed)
   - Divorce made cheaper - 1949
2. Declining stigma
   - Mitchell and Goody - Rapid decline in stigma since the 1960s
3. Securalisation
   - Religious institutions and ideas are losing influence
   - Many churches are beginning to soften their views on divorce
4. Rising expectations of marriage
   - Fletcher - People place higher expectations on marriage today
   - Influenced by the ideology of Romantic love as presented in the media
   - Marriage used to focus more on family economics than love
   - Functionalists argue most adults marry and re-marry and so Marriage still holds the same position
   - Feminism argue female oppression is the main cause of marital conflict
5. Women increased financial independence
   - Women more likely to be in paid work
   - Narrowing pay gap
   - Girls greater success in education
   - Women no longer have to be financially dependent on men
   - Allan and Crow - Marriage is less embedded within the economic system
6. Feminist explanations
   - Dual burden - Creating conflict between couples
   - Hochschild - For many women they feel more valued at work than at home
   - Sigle-Rushton - Mothers who have a dual burden are more likely to divorce than non-working mothers
   - Cooke and Gash argue there is no evidence of Rushtons claim
7. Modernity and individualisation
   - Beck and Giddens - In modern society traditional norms such as duty to remain with the same partner for life lose their hold over individuals
   - Individuals become less willing to stay in a relationship if it is not working

Question 13

Partnerships: Marriage

Answer 13

• Fewer people marrying
• More people are re-marrying (2012 - one third of marriages were re-marriages)
• People are marrying later (2012 - 32 for men and 30 for women)
• Couples are less likely to marry in a church

Reasons:

• Changing attitudes to marriage - Less pressure to marry and more freedom to choose
• Securalisation - Churches are losing their influence
• Declining stigma surrounding alternatives e.g Cohabitation, remaining single and having children outside of marriage
• Changes in the position of Women - Better educational and career prospects
• Fear of divorce

Question 14

Partnerships: Cohabitation

Answer 14

• There are roughly 2.9 million cohabiting heterosexual couples
• There are an estimated 69,000 same-sex couples cohabiting
• To some it is a stepping stone to marriage for others it is more permanent (Coast - 75% Cohabiting couples expect to marry each other)
• Bejin - Among young people cohabiting shows a consious attempt to create a more personally negotiated and equal relationship
  Reasons:
• Decline in stigma attached to sex outside of marriage
• Women have less need for the financial security of Marriage

Question 15

Partnerships: Same-sex couples

Answer 15

• Stonewall - Around 5-7% of the adult population have same-sex relationships
• Increased social acceptance of homosexuality
• Age of consent has been equalised with that of heterosexual couples
• Since 2002 they have had the same rights to adoption
• 2004 Civil Partnership Act gave them similar legal rights to married couples
• 2014 - Able to get married
• Weeks - Friendship as kinship - Friendships become a sort of kinships network
• Allan and Crow - because of the absence of legal framework smae-sex partners have had to negotiate more
• Einasdottir - While many couples welcome the opportunity for their relaionships to be legally recognised others fear it may limit the flexibility and negotiability of relationships

Question 16

Partnerships: One person Households

Answer 16

• 2013 almost 3 in 10 households contain only one person
• 40% of all one-person households are over 65

Reasons:

• Increase in seperation and divorce - Particularly Men
• Decline in the number of those marrying
• Increase in the number getting married later in life

Duncan and Philips

• 1 in 10 adults are living apart together
• Choice and constraint played a part in this
• Some wanted to keep their own home or because of previous relationship or because it was ‘too early’ to cohabit
• No longer seen as abnormal

Question 17

Parents and Children: Childbearing

Answer 17

• 47% of all children are born outside of marriage
• Women are having children a lot later than they used to (2012 - Avergae was 28.1 years)
• Women are having fewer children
• More women are remaining childless

Reasons:

• Decline in stigma surrounding having children outside of marriage
• Women have more choice and freedom than just motherhood - Many are more focused on career

Question 18

Parents and Children: Lone-parent families

Answer 18

• 1 in 4 children live in a lone-parent family
• 90% of lone-parents are lone mothers
• Up to the 1990’s this was made up of divorced women, from the early 1990’s single (never married) women became the biggest group
• Twice as likely to be in poverty

Reasons:

• Increase in divorce, seperation and the number of those choosing not to marry
• Belief women are by nature better suited to a nurturing role
• Divorce courts usually give custody to the mother
• Men are usually less willing to give up work for childcare
• Renvoize Professional women are able to support their child withour the fathers involvement
• Cashmore - Some working-class mothers choose to live of benefits rather than live with a partner often due to experience with domestic abuse

Murray
- Overgenerous welfare state - creating a ‘perverse incentive’ and a ‘dependency culture’
Criticism
- Lack of affordable childcare - 60% of lone parents are unemployed
- Inadequate benefits
- Most lone parents are women who earn less than men anyway
- Failure of the father to pay maintenance

Question 19

Parents and Children: Stepfamilies

Answer 19

• 10% of families with dependent children
• 85% there is a child from the womans previous relationship
• 11% there is a child from the mans previous relationship
• Ferri and Smith - Very similar to first families but are at greater risk of poverty
• Allan and Crow - May face problems of divided loyalties and issues such as tension with non-resident parents

Reasons:

• Increasing Divorce and Seperation
• More children are from the womans previous relationship as she is more likely to gain custody
• Stepparents are greater risk of poverty as they are likely to have more children than average supporting children from previous relationships
• Lack of clear social norms surrounding stepfamilies

Question 20

Ethnic differences in Family Patterns

Answer 20

Black families:

• Higher proportion of lone-parent families
• Female headedf amilies as a result of family disorganisation tracing back to slavery when children would stay with the mother when families were seperated
• Mirza - Higher rate of lone families reflects the high value black women place on independence

Asian Families:

• Tend to be much larger families
• Result of younger age profile - higher proportion at childbearing age
• Ballard - Extended family ties provide an important source of support among asian migrants
• Used to share houses now they generally just live nearby

Question 21

The Extended Family

Answer 21

• Willmott - The extended family continues to exist as a ‘Dispersed extended family’ - Geographically seperated but contact through phone calls and visits
• Chamberlain - Caribbean families still support each other despite being geographically dispersed - ‘multiple nuclear families’

Beanpole families - Brannen

• Extended vertically through grandparents, parents and children but not horizontally through cousins, aunts and uncles
• Result of increased life expectancy and smaller family sizes

Obligations to relatives

• Mason and Finch - Over 90% of people had given or recieved financial help and half had cared for a sick relative - Mainly Women
• Cheal - Daughter or Daughter-in-law is usually called upon for help with a sick grandmother but daughters are rarely chosen to provide money

Question 22

Functionalism and the Nuclear Family

Answer 22

• Parsons - ‘Functional fit’ - The nuclear family is suited to meeting the needs of modern society
• Because of the families ability to perform essential functions we can generalise about the type of family in modern society
• Other types of families can be seen as dysfunctional

Question 23

The New Right and the Nuclear Family

Answer 23

• Firmly oppose Family diversity
• Hold the view there is only one correct type of family - Nuclear
• The Nuclear Family is natural and based on fundemental biological differences
• Argue the growth of Family diversity causes social problems

Lone parents:

• Lone mothers cannot discipline their children properly
• Often they leave boys without an adult male role model
• More likely to be poorer thus a burden on the welfar state

Benson: Cohabitation

• Rate of family breakdown was much higher among cohabiting couples
• Only marriage can provide a stable enviroment for children
• Marriage is more stable because it requires deliberate commitment
• Laws and policies such as easy access to divorce and gay marriage undermine the conventional family

Criticism:

• Oakley (Feminist) - Wrongly assume that husbands and wives roles are fixed biologically
• Feminists - The conventional nuclear family is based on patriarchal oppression of women
• Cohabitation is higher among poorer social groups - Smart - It may be this that causes breakdown of relationships not cohabitation

Question 24

Chester: The Neo-conventional family

Answer 24

• The only important change is a move from the traditional nuclear family to the ‘neo-conventional family’ - Dual earner families
• He sees no other evidence of major change
• Those who are not part of a nuclear family will be in the future or have been in the past
  Evidence:
• Most people live in a household headed by a married couple
• Often in births outside of marriage the birth is registered jointly
• For most cohabitation is a phase

Question 25

The Rapoports

Answer 25

Five types of Family diversity:

1. Organisational diversity - Difference in the way family roles are organised
2. Cultural diversity - Different cultures, religions and ethnicities have different family structures
3. Social class diversity - Diffferent family structures are partly a result of income differences
4. Life-stage diversity - Family structures differ dependent of the life stages people have reached
5. Generational diversity - Different generations have different attitudes

Question 26

Postmodernism and Family diversity

Answer 26

Cheal:

• Society is no longer structured, predictable and orderly and so there is no longer one dominant, stable family structure
• Gives people greater freedom to plot their own life courses but greater risk of instability

Stacey:

• Greater freedom has benefitted women
• Many of the women she interviewed had rejected the tradition housewife-mother role creating new types of families to fit their needs better
• ‘Divorce extended-family’ - members are connected through divorce rather than marriage
• Morgan argues it is pointless trying to label families and make generalisations but rather to identify a family as whatever arrangments those invloved choose to call family

Question 27

Postmodernism: Giddens and Beck

Answer 27

Individualisation thesis

• Traditional social structures have lost thier influence
• In the past people were prevented from choosing their life course as they had fixed roles, but today this is not the case - We have become ‘disembedded’ from traditional roles

Giddens

• Family has been trasnformed by greater choice and more equal relationships due to things such as contraception and womens greater independence and work opportunities
• Pure Relationship - Relationships are now based on individual choice rather than laws, religion, etc - Couples stay together because of love rather than anything else inevitably making them less stable
• Same-sex couples - Not based on traditions as they were often not accepted by traditions - Enabling them to create family structures that support their needs

Beck:

• ‘Risk society’ - Tradition has less influence and so we are more aware of the risks
• Negotiated family - Do not comply with traditional norms but vary according to the wishes and expectations of their members - Although ore equal it is less stable
• Zombie family - People want the family to provide a safe haven and whilst it looks like it is alive it is actually dead and cannot provide for its members as it is too unstable

Question 28

The Personal Life Perspective and the Family

Answer 28

Criticism of Individualisation Thesis

• Exaggerates how much choice people have - Traditional views have not weakened that much
• Ignores the fact that relationships are made within a social context
• Ignores the importance of structural factors shaping relationship choices

Connectedness thesis
- We live within networks of existing relationships and interwoven personal histories which affect our choices in relationships
- Finch and Mason - Although people hvae some choice they are embedded within in family connections - not always ‘Pure relationships’ we can walk away from at will
- Structures are not disappearing but being re-shaped
- Einasdottir - While lesbianism is now tolerated heteronormativity still means they ‘stay in the closet’ limiting thier choices
- Changing social structures mean people have to create more diverse family types rather than it being a result of greater choice
- There are still structural factors limiting choice
Class and Gender
- Women are usually given custody of the children after divorce
- Men are generally paid better
- Relative powerlessness of Women and children compared to men

Question 29

Comparative view of Family Policy

Answer 29

China’s one child Policy

• Women must seek permission to get pregnant
• Couples who comply get extra benefits

Communist Romania

• In the 1980’s they introduced policies to try and raised the birth rate
• Restricted contraception and abortion and set up infertility clinics
• Lowered the legal age of marriage to 15 and made childless couples and unmarried adults pay an extra 5% income tax

Nazi Family Policy

• Encouraged healthy and supposedly ‘racially pure’ to reproduce
• Sought to confine women to ‘Children, Kitchen and Church’
• Sterilised 375,000 disabled people many of whom were later murdered in concentration camps

Question 30

Functionalism and Social Policy

Answer 30

• View policies as helping families perform their functions better

Fletcher

• Introducing health education and housing policies has led to a welfare state
• e.g NHS helps the family better take care of its members when they are sick

Criticism

• It assumes all members of the family benefit equally (feminists)
• It assumes there is a ‘march of progress’ - Marxists argue policies can reverse progress e.g cutting welfare benefits

Question 31

Donzelot

Answer 31

• Conflict view seeing policy as a form of state power and control over families

Policing of Families

• Foucalt - Power is diffused through society - Doctors and Social workers using their ‘expert knowledge’ to turn people into cases
• Poor families are more likely to be seen as a problem and these are the people targetted by professionals for ‘improvement’
• Condry - The state may seek to control family life by imposing Parenting Orders - Parents of truants may be forced to go to parenting classes to learn how to bring up their children in the ‘correct’ way

Criticism
- Marxists and Feminists argue he fails to recognise who benefits from such policies

Question 32

The New right and Family Policy

Answer 32

• In favour of the Traditional nuclear family
• The changes have led to greater family diversity are threatening the conventional family and producing social problems

Almond

• Making divorce easier undermines marriage as a lifelong commitment
• Introducing civil partnerships and marriage for gay and lesbian couples send the message that the state no longer see heterosexuality as superior
• Tax laws discriminate against conventional families meaning usually they pay more tax than dual earner couples

Murray

• Providing generous welafre benefits encourages a dependency culture and offers a perverse incentive
• e.g providing council housing for unmarried tennage mothers encourages more young girls to become pregnant
• Thretens the essential functions of the family - socialisation of the young and the maintenance of work ethic among men

Argued solution

• Cut welafre spending and restrict who is eligible for benefits
• Also advocate for policies that support the traditional nuclear family
• Less state intervention - less relaince will allow the family to meet its need most effectively

Criticism

• Femenists - it is an attempt to justify a return to traditional patriarchal nuclear family
• Wrongly assumes nuclear family is ‘natural’ not socially constructed
• Abbott and Wallace - Cutting benefits would drive many more families into poverty making them even less self reliant
• Ignore policies that do support the nuclear family

Question 33

New rights influence on policies

Answer 33

Conservative government 1979 - 97

• Banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities
• Define divorce as a social problem - emphasised the continued support for children following divorce
• Made divorce easier and gave ‘illegitimate’ children the same rights as those born to married parents

New labour government 1997 - 2010
- Emphasised the need for parents to take responsibility for thier children
- Silva and Smart - New labout recognised that the family should not just have one male earner but that women now go out to work too
- Welfare, taxation and minimum wage policies aimed to pull children out of poverty by re-distributing income ot the poor
- Giving civil partnerships to same-sex couples
- Giving unmarried and married couples the same rights to adopt
- Oulawing discrimination based on sexuality
Favoured the dual-earner neo-conventional family (Chester)
- Longer maternity leave for both parents
- Working families tax credit, parents could claim tax relief on childcare costs
- The New Deal, helping lone parents return to work

Conservative Led governments

• Hayton - Modernisers (Recgonise families are now more diverse and are willing to reflect that in policies) - Traditionalists (reject diversity as morally wrong)
• Found it difficult to maintain consistent policy on Family - e.g Introduced gay marriage opposed by the New Right

Question 34

Feminism and Family Policy

Answer 34

• Land - Many Social policies assume that the ideal family is the patriarchal nuclear family
• This affects policies often resulting in them reinforcing that type of family - Making it more difficult for other types of family

Policies supporting patriarchal family:

• Tax and benfits policies - Assume husbands are the main wage-earners making it challenging for wives to claim social security benefits in their own right
• Childcare - The government does not pay for enough childcare for both parents to work full-time leaving women economically dependent on their husbands
• Care for the sick and elderly - Women often expected to care for older family members restricting them from the workplace

Leonard
Even where policies apear to support women they may still reinforce patriarchy
- Maternity leave payment is much more generous than paternity leave
- Child benefit is usually paid to the mother

Evalutation

• Not all policies are directed at maintaining patriarchy e.g equal pay, sex discrimination laws, the right of lesbians to marry, domestic violence refuges
• Rape within marriage was made a criminal offence in 1991

Question 35

Gender regimes

Answer 35

Drew

• Familistic gender regimes - Policies are based on traditional gender divisions
• Individualistic gender regimes - Policies based on the idea that husbands and wives should be treated in the same way - each partner has seperate entitlement to state benefits

State versus market

• Policies such as publicly funded childcare are not cheap and often invlove major conflict over who should benefit from social policies there for you cannot assume there is an inevitable ‘march of progress’ towards gender equality
• Trend towards neo-liberal welfare policies - Families are encouraged to use the market rather than state to meet their needs

Question 36

Domestic division of Labour

Answer 36

Parsons
- Instrumental and Expressive roles
- Divison of labour is based on biological differences
- Beneficial to men and women, their children and wider society
Criticism
- Young and Willmott - Men are now taking greater responsibility in domestic tasks
- Feminists reject the idea this is natural and argue it only benefits men

Bott - Joint and Segregated Conjugal roles

• Segregated conjugal roles - the couple have seperate roles Instrumental and expressive roles. Leisure activities also tend to be seperate
• Joint conjugal roles - the couple share tasks and spend their leisure time together
• Young and Willmott found segregated conjugal roles in their study of working-class extended families in Bethnal Green

The Symmetrical family:
Although not identical the roles of husband and wife are much more similar
- Women now go to work, although may be part-time
- Men now help with Childcare and housework
- Couples now tend to spend their leisure time together
More common in younger people and as a result of:
- Changes in Womens position
- Geographical mobility
- New technology e.g Washing Machines
- Higher standard of living

Feminist view of Housework

• Argue little has changed and this inequality is a result of a male-dominated society and patriarchy
• Oakley - Young and Willmott exaggerate the husband help could simply be taking the children for a walk or making breakfast on one occasion - She found evidence of Husband help but not enough to class it as symmetry
• Husbands more likely to take on Childcare than Housework but only the more enjoyable parts - Meaning mothers could lose the rewards childcare and are left with more time for housework
• Boulton - Fewer than 20% of Husbands had a major role in Childcare
• Warde and Hetherington - Sex-typing remained strong, often men would only complete ‘female’ tasks when she wasn’t around