Gender Roles in The Contemporary Family

• Conjugal roles


  Roles of husband and wife in a household
• The term conjugal roles would extend to other forms of partnership too in contemporary society
• Instrumental role


  • The "breadwinner"; the head of the household; in charge of discipline
• Expressive role


  • Taking the lead in emotional support; nurturing: caring: domestic duties (childcare and housework)
• Parsons argued that the instrumental and expressive roles were the situation in nuclear families, following industrialisation, and that men and women were naturally suited to these roles
• Ann Oakley agreed with Parsons that the gender division of labour was a product of the Industrial Revolution but she believed the idea that women were biologically programmed to be housewives was the product of deeply-embedded cultural values, or patriarchal ideology, built up through the social construction of the housewife role
• Segregated roles


  Very much the Parsons' model, where men and women have distinct roles and responsibilities within the household
• Joint roles


  Less clear segregation of roles: men and women will make decisions about the family and about spending money jointly
• Wilmott and Young argued that joint roles would become the norm and families would be equal, and that this symmetry had become the norm among higher-class families and was diffusing to the rest of society
• Ann Oakley destroyed Wilmott and Young's methodological basis for the symmetrical family in 1974, pointing out that a man "helping" with a few housework chores counted as joint conjugal roles, with no allowance made for the time taken over household chores
• Ann Oakley concluded that working women suffered a dual burden, as they completed the bulk of domestic chores and childcare in addition to paid work
• Dunscombe and Marsden suggest women not only have a dual burden but in fact work a triple shift as they do a full day's paid work, all the housework and childcare but also all the emotional work too
• Edgell found that none of the families in his sample had shared conjugal roles, but did find that parents were sharing childcare more than families had previously
• Gillian Dunne found that households headed by a lesbian couple tended to be symmetrical with quite an equal distribution of household tasks and shared childcare
• Jan Pahl found that unemployed men did more domestic work than employed men but wives of unemployed men still did most of the housework, even when they were in employment
• The British Attitudes Survey of 2012 found that a very small minority supported a traditional model where the men went out to work and the women looked after home and family
• Gershuny found that the longer a woman had been in paid employment the more housework her husband tended to do, therefore observing a trend towards equality
• Instrumental role


  The "head of the household"; in charge of discipline
• Traditionally men might pass some money onto his wife "for housekeeping" and she would deal with the domestic budget, but this was essentially delegation rather than power-sharing
• Edgell found that women often controlled "minor decisions" while matters of great importance tended to be controlled by the husband, correlating with men tending to earn more than their wives
• Weeks et al found that men and women often had a joint account for household spending while keeping some personal money to spend as they like
• Pahl and Vogler found that while pooled money was deemed to be shared, husbands tended to be dominant when it came to deciding how it would be spent, and an alternative model existed where the money was deemed to belong to the man, but his wife was afforded an allowance
• The personal life perspective suggests we should consider family relations in terms of the meanings that family members put on them, rather than assume they fit functionalist, Marxist or feminist structures
• Dobash and Dobash found that male violence against women often occurred when the men believed their wives not to be performing their roles correctly, and that women often reported feeling they deserved some of the attacks
• Dobash and Dobash found that only about a quarter of the women interviewed ever responded to their husband's attacks with violence themselves, and most, where there had been a break up, had returned to their abuser, often multiple times
• Dobash and Dobash found that in 80% of cases, the men acted as if nothing had happened following the attack, with most of the rest saying it was their wives' fault, and very few expressing any remorse for their behaviour
• Dobash and Dobash's work pointed out the "dark side of the family", alongside the abuse and neglect of children, in stark contrast to the idealistic picture of family life painted by functionalists like Parsons
• A significant number of domestic violence cases are against men and committed by women, and while male violence against women is more common, women do also attack men
• Dobash and Dobash's study was carried out in 1980, and some would argue it was out of date, particularly in relation to how seriously the issue is taken by police and other authorities, though a recent study found that still very small numbers of domestic violence incidents actually end with the perpetrator facing criminal prosecution