♥Couples-DIVISION OF LABOUR♥

Couples 

Is the couple life really filled with equality and love? In the next few blogs I will be summing up the research and key ideas behind the sociological thinking about couples and relationships are driven by the sex-typed roles.

Domestic Division of Labour

Domestic Division of Labour relates to how the household tasks are split between the partners living in the house and whether that in some sociologists eyes this split is equal whilst to others its not.

Parsons Instrumental and Expressive roles (1955)
In the traditional nuclear family parsons thought it to be that the roles that were allocated where those which were seen as biological or instinctive to the sexes

• Instrumental role was carried out by the husband who would be working in order to financially provide for his family being the main bread winner
• Expressive role was carried out by the mother who would stay at home take care of childcare, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the house hold

Since the 1950's there has been a change in the status of women and now other sociologists such as Willmott and Young would disagree suggesting that the division of labour in the house hold is alot more equal however feminists would reject both theories suggesting that men are the only ones holding the benefits of the family.

Bott: Joint and Segregated Conjugal Roles(1957)
Bott distinguished that there were two types of roles within the family :

• Joint Conjugal roles which were when couples would share house chores and tasks whilst also spending leisure time together rather than alone with separate friends eg, going to the cinema.
• Separated conjugal roles which which were when the male would go out and be the bread winner and woman would be a housewife which is similar to Parsons instrumental and expressive roles

Bott would be critiqued on how she hasn't taken into consideration the changing society and its slow movement into a more symmetrical family in the eyes of Willmott and Young since the social movement of women since the 50's.

Willmott and Young Symmetrical Families (1973)
W and Y see the family  as taking a gradual movement into becoming more equal and symmetrical where both sexes spend around the same time doing all task in the house hold this is due to a few changes.

• women now can go out to work, although this is part time rather than full time work,
• due to this men now help out a lot more with house work and childcare.
• couples now spend their leisure time together which makes couples more home-centred and privatised.

This thus creating a more symmetrical image due to the changes in the society over the last century such as :

• Changes in women's position with the ability of now being able to go to work
• Geographical Mobility couples move away from home town and communities they live in
• New Technology which saves times on chores
• Higher standards of living.

However Feminists would disagree saying how men hardly do any chores which oppresses the women and creates a burden on women.

Feminists Approach
Feminists sociologist rejects the march of progress view of the family becoming a more equal society in fact they believe it has become quite more the opposite especially since women have been enabled to get some sort of status for them selves.

Oakley(1974) believes that wives are the takers of s@#t and absorb mens anger. She criticises Willmotts and Young idea of the symmetrical families is definitely on a more unconvincing side of the arguments.

she found that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in the housework and only 25% participated in childcare this is over all just 40% of men.

Later on researchers such as Boulton(1983) that fewer than 20% of husbands played an active role in childcare which suggest that perhaps W and Young may have over exaggerated their findings,

Warde and Hetherington (1993) shows that sex-typing of domestic tasks is still strong women were more likely to be the last ones to do the washing whilst men would be more likely to be the last person to wash the car. They found that men would only do the 'female' tasks if partners weren't around to do them which shows a distinct division of labour between both sexes.

Oakley's Rise of the housewife role.
Industrialisation and change in status for women in society meant that the housewife role has been increased rather than decreased. Oakley found that in the 20th century women were still the primary caregiver  and also can only get into low paid part time work which means it is expected that she does have to do the house chores which in some cases is true however this approach doesn't consider such things as the New Man and how the family has placed a step forward in a more positive direction.