sociology

• Instrumental role


  Husband's role geared towards achieving success at work so that he can provide for the family financially. He is the breadwinner.
• Expressive role


  Wife's role geared towards primary socialisation of the children and meeting the family's emotional needs. She is the homemaker, a fulltime housewife rather than a wage earner.
• Parsons argues that this division of labour is based on biological differences, with women 'naturally' suited to the nurturing role and men to that of provider
• Parsons claims that this division of labour is beneficial to both men and women, to their children and to wider society
• Criticisms of Parsons' view


  • Michael Young and Peter Willmott (1962) argue that men are now taking a greater share of domestic tasks and more wives are becoming wage earners
  • Feminist sociologists reject Parsons' view that the division of labour is natural. In addition, they argue that it only benefits men.
• Segregated conjugal roles


  Couple have separate roles: a male breadwinner and a female homemaker/carer
• Joint conjugal roles


  Couple share tasks such as housework and childcare and spend their leisure time together
• Young and Willmott identified a pattern of segregated conjugal roles in their study of traditional working-class extended families in Bethnal Green, east London, in the 1950s
• Symmetrical family


  Roles of husbands and wives, although not identical, are now much more similar: women now go out to work, men now help with housework and childcare, couples now spend their leisure time together
• Young and Willmott see the rise of the symmetrical nuclear family as the result of major social changes that have taken place during the past century
• Social changes leading to the symmetrical family

  • Changes in women's position, including married women going out to work
  • Geographical mobility – more couples living away from the communities in which they grew up
  • New technology and labour-saving devices
  • Higher standards of living
• Feminist sociologists reject the 'march of progress' view and argue that little has changed: men and women remain unequal within the family and women still do most of the housework
• Feminist sociologist Ann Oakley criticises Young and Willmott's view that the family is now symmetrical, arguing that their claims are exaggerated
• Oakley found that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework, and only 25% had a high level of participation in childcare
• Husbands were more likely to share in childcare than in housework, but only its more pleasurable aspects
• Later research supports Oakley's findings, with fewer than 20% of husbands having a major role in childcare
• Research in the 1990s found that sex-typing of domestic tasks remained strong, with wives 30 times more likely to be the last person to have done the washing, while husbands were four times more likely to be the last person to wash the car
• Men would only carry out routine 'female' tasks when their partners were not around to do them
• Younger men no longer assumed that women should do the housework, and were more likely to think they were doing less than their fair share
• Women going out to work raises the question of whether it is leading to a more equal division of domestic tasks, or simply means that women now have to carry a 'dual burden' of paid work as well as domestic work
• March of progress view


  Women going out to work is leading to a more equal division of labour at home, with men becoming more involved in housework and childcare
• Feminist view


  Women going into paid work has not led to greater equality in the division of domestic labour, with women still carrying a dual burden
• In 2012, men on average did 8 hours of housework a week, whereas women did 13 hours. Similarly, men spent 10 hours on care for family members, whereas women spent 23 hours
• 60% of women felt this division of labour was unjust because they were doing more than their fair share
• Couples continue to divide household tasks along traditional gender lines, with women much more likely to do the laundry, care for sick family members, shop for groceries, do the cleaning and prepare the meals, while men were more likely to do small repairs around the house
• Women's tasks, such as washing and cleaning, are less intrinsically satisfying
• Fathers took responsibility for childcare in fewer than 4% of families, and only 1% took the main responsibility for caring for a sick child
• Most fathers held a 'provider ideology' that their role was as breadwinners, while the mothers saw themselves as the primary carers
• Emotion work


  Women are often required to perform emotion work, where they are responsible for managing the emotions and feelings of family members
• Triple shift


  Women have to perform a 'triple shift' of housework, paid work and emotion work
• Achieving quality time for the family has become more difficult in today's late modern society with recent social changes such as the emergence of the 24/7 society and flexible working patterns
• Although some studies show that men and women have more or less equal amounts of leisure time, women's leisure is often punctuated by child care and they are more likely to multi-task than men
• There may have been some movement towards an equal division of labour, but perhaps not very much. There is conflicting evidence on how much time men and women spend on domestic tasks
• When it comes to responsibility for housework and especially for childcare, equality appears to be some way off
• The evidence we have considered above suggests there may have been some movement towards an equal division of labour, but perhaps not very much
• There is conflicting evidence on how much time men and women spend on domestic tasks – some findings, such as Gershuny's, suggesting a move towards greater equality, whereas other evidence (for example, from the British Social Attitudes survey) indicates continuing inequality
• When it comes to responsibility for housework and especially for childcare, however, equality appears to be some way off
• Cultural or ideological explanation of inequality


  The division of labour is determined by patriarchal norms and values that shape the gender roles in our culture. Women perform more domestic labour simply because that is what society expects them to do and has socialised them to do
• Material or economic explanation of inequality


  The fact that women generally earn less than men means it is economically rational for women to do more of the housework and childcare while men spend more of their time earning money
• Women continue to earn less than men: in seven out of eight households, men earn more