Family : Liberal Feminists : Oakley

• Ann Oakley

  Dakey conducted 40 in-depth interviews with London housewives. The interviews took two hours and she tape recorded the conversations. The sample came from two different areas of London, one predominantly working class and the other predominantly middle class, further determined by husband’s occupation.The participants were selected from medical records from two general practices. The housewives were aged between 20 and 30 and all were mothers with at least one child under five.
• Ann Oakley

  Oakley's aim was to describe the housewife's situation and examine patterns of dissatisfaction. She presented her findings as qualitative and quantitative, including direct quotes alongside percentages. Dissatisfaction is higher among those who report monotony: 80% of the women who said 'yes’ to the monotony question are dissatisfied with housework, compared to 40% of those who said 'no'.
• Ann Oakley

  The conclusion is that monotony is clearly associated with work dissatisfaction, and this is supported by the large number of housewives who mentioned monotony spontaneously at various points in the interview.
• Ann Oakley

  Oakley is critical of work done by Young and Willmott who suggest that there is more equality in marital relationships. Her results show that a fundamental separation remains in the family unit with home and children remaining the women's primary responsibility.
• Ann Oakley

  Ann Oakley defined the conventional family as "nuclear families composed of legally married couples, voluntarily choosing parenthood of one or more children". This is otherwise known as the cereal packet family: the image of a normal family that was portrayed in television advertisements and soap operas at the time when she was writing. Oakley critically examines this idea.
• Ann Oakley

  She looks at the work of other sociologists and considers where the idea that this was the "normal" way to live came from, and the influence it has over society and individuals. She considered the way the conventional family worked as a form of social control: people were expected to live in these families, and this controlled them by making it harder to live alternative lives. As people got older - especially women - they would be regularly asked when they were going to get married and have children, as though alternatives to this life plan were unthinkable.
• Ann Oakley

  Oakley noted that, even in the early 1980s, the conventional family was being challenged. People were exploring different ways of living and different arrangements that worked for them and did not conform to convention. She noted that people increasingly saw the conventional family as a stereotype and an archaic one. Instead some groups understood that they could organise their families differently and, indeed, that they did not have to live in a family at all, but could choose some other form of household or living arrangement.