Domestic Division of Labour

• Oakley found that housework was still largely done by women even when both partners worked full time. She argued that women were expected to do more than their fair share because they had internalised patriarchal values which meant they felt guilty if they did not do enough work around the home.
• Young and Willmott described conjugal roles in the contemporary family as joint. Women as well as men were wage earners, so men helped with domestic work and child care, unlike in earlier times when women were full-time housewives and roles were segregated. Joint roles were described as symmetrical, as both partners did paid work, housework and childcare, though often in different proportions, as the new man was more likely to work full time. The family was supposedly democratic.
• Oakley claimed that Young and Willmott had exaggerated men's domestic role by rating even a small chore as contribution to housework. She found that only 15% of husbands helped with this to a substantial degree, and only 25% with childcare. Middle-class men participated more in both than working-class respondents, but this was vastly outweighed by the average of 77 hours a week of domestic duties done by women. Even with new household gadgets, this labour was repetitive, isolated and taken for granted. However, critics have suggested that Oakley's questions to women were loaded.
• Allan also criticised Young and Willmott's methodology, as their sample of couples aged 30 to 49 excluded younger women with small children, who probably would have spent longer on housework.
• VanEvery points out that older children are often trained to help in the house and their subsequent role in the division of labour complicates conjugal role studies.