Families and Households 1.5- Roles and Relationships within the family

The rise of the nuclear family led to joint conjugal roles:

Conjugal roles are the roles of the husband and wife (or partner and partner) within a home. ELIZABETH BOTT (1975) studied how jobs and roles within the family were allocated to men and women in modern industrial Britain.

Her study is old, but it is the foundations for the debate.

BOTT (1957) identified two ways household jobs can be shared:

1. Segregated Roles- husbands and wives lead separate lives with clear and distinct responsibilities within the family. The man goes to work, the women look after the kids
2. Joint Roles- husband and wives roles are more flexible and shared with less defined tasks for each. Everything is shared

WILMOTT and YOUNG (1973)

Studied the changing structures of British families from extended to nuclear. They believed that the increase in nuclear families meant joint conjugal roles would increase. They predicted that equal and shared responsibilities would be the future norm in British families.

OAKLEY (1974)

Pointed out that their study only required men to do a few things around the house to qualify as having joint roles. Their methodology overlooked the amount of time spent doing housework, making 10 minutes washing up the equivalent of doing an hours hovering. Oakley’s research found it was rare for men to do a lot of housework

Conjugal Roles are still unequal, although most women have paid jobs

Since previous research, there have been a development in the amount of family types, sociological research shows that an equal share of paid employment hasn’t led to an equal share in domestic labour:

1. EDGELL (1980)- tested Willmott and Young’s theory and found non of his sample families had joint conjugal roles in relation to housework. However, found an increase in shared childcare.
2. OAKLEY (1974)- found that women took on double burdens, taking on paid work and keeping the traditional responsibilities in the home
3. BOULTON (1983)- concluded that men may help out with specific bits of childcare, but women are primarily responsible
4. FERRI and SMITH (1996)- found that two thirds of full time working mothers said they were responsible for cooking and cleaning. Four fifths of the same group said they were responsible for laundry

BRITISH SOCIAL ATTITUDES SURVEY (1991) was a large scale study of over 1000 people, and found a clear division of labour, women did most of the work.

Industrialisation led to the creation of the HOUSEWIFE

1. OAKLEY thinks the role of the housewife was socially constructed by the social changes of the industrial revolution, where people started to go to work in factories instead of home.
2. Married women are not usually allowed to work in factories, the role of housewife was created for them
3. Middle class households had female servants for domestic jobs, working class women did it themselves
4. Cultural values that said women should be in charge of housework were so dominant that they said it came naturally to them

Decision making and sharing of resources can be unequal

DEGELL (1980)

interviewed middle class couples, and found men had decision making control over things both husband and wife saw as important, whilst women had control over minor decisions. Half of the husbands studied, and two thirds of wives, expressed that sexual equality was a bad thing

Pahl (1989, 1993)

researched money management by 100 dual income couples, and found that the most common form of financial management was husband controlled pooling, which is what she defined as “the money is shared, but the husband has the dominant role in how its spent”

Explanations of inequality are based on theories about power in society

1.FUNCTIONALISTS, men and women still largely perform different tasks and roles within the family because its the most effective way to keep society running smoothy

2. MARXIST, interpret the fact that men and women have different roles as evidence of the power of capitalism to control the family life. They say that women and men have unequal roles because capitalism worked best that way. Even with more women working outside the hole in equal hours to men, the capitalist class needs to promote women as naturally caring and nurturing to ensure workers are kept fit and healthy. The role of women is portrayed ideologically through media

3. FEMINISTS, inequality in household roles demonstrate inequality in power between men and women. A patriarchal society will produce conjugal relationships between societies systems and values will inevitably benefit men at the expense of women

Women in families can be responsible for all the emotional work

Doing emotional work in a family means reacting and responding to other family members’ emotions, alleviating pain and distress, and responding to and managing anger and frustration

DIANE BELL (1990) suggested that theres an economy of emotion within all families and that running economy is the responsibility of women.

She says managing family emotion is a big like bookkeeping, the women’s role is to balance the families emotional budget

DUNCOMBE and MARDEN (1995) found that women in families are often required to do housework and childcare, paid employment and emotional work, amounting to triple shift work

They found that married women were happier when their husbands shared some of the burden or emotional work

They also found that emotional work is predominantly gendered, women having the main responsibility for managing whole family emotions

GILLIAN DUNNE (1999) studied lesbian households, she found the distribution of responsibilities such as child care and housework tended to be equal between the partners. The couples were flexible and fair in the way they shared work.

Dunno though in heterosexual relationships, the divisions of work in the household was usually less fair because of traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity

Some sociologists see child abuse as a term for power

Sociologists study child abuse by parents and carers in terms of a power relationship.

NEED to be able to explain abuse as a form or power RATHER than explaining details of abuse

a parent or carer is able to abuse a child by manipulating the responsibilities and trust which go along with the role of parent and carer. Families are private and separate from the rest of society. This makes it less likely for the child to report the abuse

social policies have 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 safety

Domestic violence affects many families in the UK

ELIZABETH STANKO (2000)

1. women is killed by her current or former partner every three days in England and Wales
2. There are 570,000 cases of domestic violence reported in the UK every year
3. An incident of domestic violence occurs in the UK every 6-20 seconds

The home office estimates 16% of all violent crimes in the UK is domestic violence

hoTe forth United Nations Women’s Conference in 1995 reported that 25% of women world wide experienced domestic violence

RADCIAL FEMINISTS see domestic violence as a form of patriarchal control

violence is treated differently to other violent crime:

1. DOBASH and DOBASH (1979) found police usually didn’t record violent crime by husbands against crime

since this study, police have set up specialised domestic violence units, but still the conviction rate is low compared to other forms of assault.

2. Before 1991, British law said a husband was entitled to have sex with his wife against her will. In 1991 the rape law changed to say that a husband could be charged for raping his wife.

Radical feminists use the 1991 law change to support their argument that laws and social policies have traditionally worked to control women, and keep mens power in society going

Radical feminists believe that violence against women within the family is a form of power and control

The social climate helps to maintain this situation by making women feel ashamed and stigmatised if they talk about the violence. The shame and stigma are part of the ideology of patriarchy, the school of thought that says women should know their place.

The idea of shame comes from the ideal that women should know better, and not get involved with violent men in the first place, the tendency is to blame the victim.

DOBASH and DOBASH found that most women who left their violent partner returned in the end. This was due to fear of being stigmatised, and because they were financially dependent on their partner.

Abusive partners often condition their victim into thinking that nobody cares and there is no where to go. The pressure not to leave an abusive partner comes from the relationship as well as from society.

HOWEVER criticised for overemphasising power of men

1. Radical feminists overemphasise the place of domestic violence in the family. FUNCTIONALISTS argue that most families operate harmoniously and POSTMODERNIST theory argues that individuals have much more choice and control to avoid, leave or reshape a family.
2. Presents men as all powerful and women as powerless, when in reality women often hold some power over men. MELAINE PHILLIPS (2003) highlights the fact that women abuse men too, and male victims are often ignored by society and the police. The pressure group families need fathers campaign for men to have equal rights in family and child law.