Relationships And Processes Within Familes Flashcards
Expressive and instrumental role: Parsons
from a functionalist perspective. Parsons (1955) argues that in the nuclear family the husband and wife have different separate roles to play.
Parsons (1955) argues that the division of labour is in terms of the husband playing an ‘instrumental’ role which means focusing on achieving success at work to be the breadwinner for the family and focusing on the financial needs of the family.
The wife plays an ‘expressive’ role which is focused on looking after the children and household and focusing on the family in terms of emotional needs. Parsons (1955) argues that this model fits because women are natually suited to nurturing the family and men are naturally suited to be a provider for the family.
Evaluation
This theory is highly criticised by the feminist perspective that argues that there is nothing natural about this model of division of labour and it just benefits men
Definition of conjugal roles
Conjugal roles refer to the domestic and household responsibilities of cohabiting partners.
A conjugal relationship specifies the relationship between the cohabiting couple.
Elizabeth Bott’s Conjugal Roles
Bott studied 20 families with children aged under 10 in 1950s London. She aimed to form an idea on the nature of conjugal roles and relationships within these families, through conducting qualitative interviews with both the wives and the husbands.
Bott never claimed that her research on only these 20 families could be generalised to represent conjugal roles in wider society. Nevertheless, after the initial research, Bott (1971) differentiated two types of conjugal roles that would become important sociological concepts: segregated conjugal roles and joint conjugal roles.
Segregated Conjugal Roles
This category of conjugal roles is usually applied to heterosexual nuclear families, where the duties of the husband and wife are different and separate. Other characteristics are as follows:
Responsibilities within the households are clearly divided into “male” and “female” tasks.
This was especially the norm in the early 20th century. Women are expected to solely manage all household responsibilities and childrearing (bring up a child), while men are expected to work and act as the main breadwinner of the family.
Men and women spend their leisure time separately. Husbands have different interests and different groups of friends from their wives.
Families are male-dominated. The men have the responsibility to earn a living, but thus are also usually the authority on how and where to spend the money.
However, it is also critical to note that conjugal roles have always differed for families of different social classes. In segregated conjugal relationships, while women of all classes are expected to be homemakers and childcarers, working-class women also have to take up paid labour outside the home to make ends meet. In contrast, middle-class women have tended to manage their households and oversee their staff, such as maids and nannies.
Joint Conjugal Roles
joint conjugal roles are generally more equal and shared, and can be applied to different types of families. They mean that domestic responsibilities are shared relatively equally between partners. There is no clear division between “male” and “female” tasks.
The husband and wife spend a lot of their leisure time together, they share many interests and many friends.
Many sociologists claim that this has become the new norm in families, thanks to the feminist movement and women’s entry into the workforce.
In contemporary Western society, men and women tend to share both domestic and public responsibilities and tasks, at least in theory. This type of family is called a ‘symmetrical family’ by Willmot and Young.
Nevertheless, sociologists who are critical of the idea of the symmetrical family have found that even in homes where both partners believe that the responsibilities are equally shared, women do more for their families than men. Some theorists have also argued that heterosexual marriage cannot ever be completely equal in a patriarchal society. They contend that homosexual couples share conjugal roles more equally.
