Symmetrical Debate

• Couples are becoming more equal - Willmott and Young:

  > take a march of progress view and see family life as gradually improving for all its members (becoming more equal and democratic) - in 1973, they identified a trend towards joint conjugal roles and the symmetrical family

  > they put the rise of the symmetrical family down to four factors: changes in the position of women, geographical mobility, new technology and higher standards of living
• Couples are becoming more equal - Sullivan:

  > Sullivan's analysis of data collected over a 25 year period found a trend towards greater equality e.g. men did more domestic labour

  > there was an increase in the number of couples with an equal division of labour and men were participating more in traditional 'women's' tasks
• Couples are becoming more equal - British Social Attitudes:

  > found a decrease in the number of people who think it is a man's job to earn money and the women's job to look after the home and family
• Couples are becoming more equal - Future Foundations:

  > study of 1000 adults

  > 60% of men claimed to do more housework than their father

  > 75% of women claimed to do less housework than her mother
• Couples are not becoming more equal - Oakley:

  > Oakley criticises Willmott and Young's march of progress view e.g. for not using fair measures of symmetry

  > 15% of husbands have a high level of participation in housework and 25% in childcare

  > the father's role was seen as taking an interest as they engage in more pleasurable aspects of caring for a child or would occasionally 'take them off her hands', which often meant that women often lost pleasurable time with children and used their 'spare' time on housework
• Couples are not becoming more equal - Dex and Ward:

  > support the idea that it is almost always the mother who is responsible for a child's security and well being

  > found that, although fathers had high levels of involvement with their 3 year olds (78% played with their children), when it came to caring for a sick child only 1% of fathers took the main responsibility
• Couples are not becoming more equal:

  > Hochschild - women are required to perform emotion work (managing the feelings of others and themselves)

  > Duncombe and Marsden - this means women are performing a triple shift of paid work, housework and emotion work
• Couples are not becoming more equal - Southerton:

  > flexible working patterns in modern society means people have become 'de-routinised', so quality time is especially difficult for women to get

  > men are more likely to experience blocks of uninterrupted leisure time, whereas women's leisure is often punctuated with childcare, so are more likely to be able to multitask

  > women are carrying a dual burden