P2 Families and Households - Housework and Childcare Flashcards
What is segregated division of labour?
A traditional sexual division of labour in which women take responsibility for housework and mothering, and men take responsibility for being the breadwinner and head of the household
What does Parson argue about segregated division of labour?
He argues that there are expressive and instrumental leaders
What does Young and Wilmott argue?
They claimed the relationship between husbands and wife was becoming symmetrical and moving towards an egalitarian marriage.
What does Young and Wilmott argue is the “new man”?
They thought that a “new man” had appeared during the 1980s –> males were in touch with their feminine side and were happy to meet women emotional and domestic needs.
- 72% of household men contributed to the housework
What are the reasons for the rise in the symmetrical family?
- Increased employment opportunities for women - duel breadwinners
- Increasing geographical mobility - severed ties with other relatives and strengthened bonds between husband and wife
- Reduction in numbers of children provides more opportunities to work
- Dual earner families - husbands drawn into the family circle
What does Ann Oakley argue?
She argues that their claim of increasing symmetry is based on inadequate research.
She argues that their figure of 72% was based on only one question in their interview schedule and therefore men and women who make only a small contribution to housework would have been included in this
What did Oakley find in her research?
In her own research, Oakley found greater equality in terms of allocation of domestic tasks between middle class spouses rather than working class.
However, only 15% of marriages in both class did men have high levels of participation
What does Dryden argue?
Women still had the most responsibility for housework and childcare and major source of dissatisfaction in marriage.
What does Lader argue?
21 hours for a female compared to only 12 hours who are both paid employment
Still traditional roles were being occupied by males and females i.e males (DIY) and females (cooking and cleaning)
What did the British Household Survey discover?
Even when both work full time, women tend to put in more hours of housework.
Why do women put more hours into housework even when working full time?
This is due to:
- Unemployment may increase resistance to housework by men as they may feel it as unmasculine and threatening their role in the family
- Degrading to men
What is the dual burden?
Wives taking responsibility for the bulk of domestic tasks as well as holding down full time jobs.
What does Sclater argue about the dual burden?
That household technologies are advertised to make life easier for women. This increases the burden as it:
- Raises household standards
- Increasing time spent on housework
What does Green argue about free time?
Green found that women saw free time as time away from paid employment and family commitment (housework) and men saw theirs as just time outside of work - all leisure time.
What does Kilkey argue about looking after children?
That working class parents are experiencing “time famine” with childcare (delegation on childcare to external carers)
