Are couples becoming more Equal?

• Sociologists argue women working is leading to Young & Willmott's symmetrical family.
• In this march of progress view men are becoming more involved in paid work and childcare.
• Gershuny (1994) argues that women working full-time is leading to an equal division of labour in the home = he argued these type of women did less domestic work than non-employed women.
• Sullivan's study (200) found a trend of women doing less domestic work and more men were participating in traditional female tasks.
• Trends reflect changes in attitude to division of labour.
• Less people believe it is the man's job to provide for the family-it is seen as a joint form of roles.
• Boulton (1983) points out although fathers help with some tasks, mothers still have the burdens of looking after the family
• Ferri & Smith (1996) argue fewer than 4% of fathers took part in family childcare
• Dex & Ward (2007) found fathers had high involvement with children-no involvement in looking after the sick
• Braun, Vincent & Ball (2010) found 3/70 families showed father's involvement in childcare
• Emotion work

  Taking responsibility of family members
• Triple shift

  Paid work, housework and emotion work
• Hochschild (2013): 'Calls 'emotion work taking responsibility of family members'
• Duncombe & Marsden (1995): 'Talks about 'triple shift' - Paid work, housework and emotion work'
• For feminists, women going into paid work has not led to great equality.
• There is also little sign of the 'new man' = that completes housework and childcare.
• Women now carry dual burden = Paid work and Emotional work.
• British Survey found in 2012, men did 8 hours of housework a week, women did 13 hours & Men spent 10 hours looking after the family, women spend 23 hours.
• Women overall do more work than men in the family (twice as much).
• Couples still have division of labour women more likely to do laundry and washing up.
• Allan (1985) = Women are less intrinsically satisfied from washing and cleaning.