Couples

• Husband

  instrumental role - geared towards achieving success so he can provide for his family
• Wife, homemaker


  expressive role - meeting the families emotional needs
• Expressive and instrumental role theorist?


  Talcott Parsons - functionalist
• Segregated conjugal roles


  couples have separate roles and also spend their leisure time separately
• Joint conjugal roles


  couples share tasks such as household work and childcare
• Theorist of segregated and joint conjugal roles?

  Bott
• March of progress approach?

  Wilmott and Young
• What is the 'march of progress' approach to families?

  there is more of a trend towards joint conjugal roles and symmetrical families
• Benthal Green study by Wilmott and Young - 1950s 


  Suggested most families had segregated conjugal roles
• What are the 4 major social changes that lead too more symmetrical families among younger people, according to Wilmott and Young?

  Changes in women's positions, Geographical mobility, New technology and higher standards of living
• Feminist argument of a 'dual burden'

  now women go out to work, they do both the paid work and the domestic work
• Ann Oakley statistics of men helping in the household

  15% have high participation with household chores. 25% have high participation with childcare
• Theorists of the triple shift?


  Duncombe and Marsden
• what is the triple shift?

  women carry out the paid work, the unpaid work and the emotional work
• The British Social attitudes survey - roles within in the family remain unequal?


  63% of women still do majority of the household chores
• Ann Oakley's criticism of 'instrumental' and 'expressive' roles


  She argues gender roles are socially constructed. Society established the idea women should do most of the household work
• Cultural explanation for inequality 


  domestic division of labour is determined by patriarchal norms and values that shape gender roles in our society
• Materialist perspective on inequality within the household


  the fact that women earn less than men do mean it is economically rational for women to do more of the household work
• Evidence for cultural explanation

  Gershuny found that couples whose parents had a more equal relationship are more likely to have an equal divide of domestic chores
• Evidence for materialist perspective


  Kan found that for every 10,000 more a women earns, she does two hours less off household work
• Dunne's research into same-sex couples found..


  in homosexual couples the domestic division of labour is much more equal as their are no gender-scripts to follow
• Dex and Ward


  78% of men played with their children. Only 1% of fathers cared for their child if sick
• Hochschild - emotion work


  taking responsibility for other members of the family
• Paul and Vogler (feminists) argue that there are two main types of control over family income 


  the allowance system and pooling
• allowance system


  men gives their wives an allowance where they have a budget to meet the families needs. The man keeps any surplus allowance for himself
• Pooling


  both partners have access to income and joint responsibility for expenditure
• Feminist argument on inequalities in decision making


  patriarchal society has deeply ingrained cultural definition of men as decision makers
• Personal life perspective


  focuses on the meaning couples give to who controls the money. The meanings of money in relationships cannot be taken for granted
• Smart found that..


  there is greater freedom for same-sex couples to do what suits them as a couple when it comes to financial spending
• Domestic abuse - an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, and violent behavior, including sexual violence, in the majority of cases by a partner or ex-partner, but also by a family member or carer
• In the vast majority of cases domestic abuse is...


  experienced by women and perpetrated by men
• Every 30 seconds a call is made to report domestic abuse
• Validity 


  a valid method is one which produces a true or genuine picture of what something is really like
• Reliability 


  a reliable method is one which, when repeated by another researcher, gives the same results
• Feminist argument about domestic abuse 


  domestic abuse works to uphold the dominance of men in patriarchal society
• The Crime Survey for England and Wales found that two million people reported having been victims of domestic abuse during the previous year
• Walby and Allen found..


  women were much more likely to be victims of several incidents of abuse and of sexual violence
• The Materialist explanation for domestic abuse 


  empathises economic factors such as lack of resources. for example, lack of money may cause domestic violence towards a partner
• Marxist feminists argue that domestic abuse...


  is the product of capitalism as lower-class male workers who are exploited at work take out the frustration on their wives