Conjugal Roles (AQA GCSE Sociology)

Joint and segregated conjugal roles

• Conjugal roles are the domestic roles of married or cohabiting partners (such as who is responsible for the ironing or the gardening)

• Bott (1971) studied families using qualitative research methods such as in-depth interviews with husbands and wives in 20 London-based families with children under 10 years of age

  • She identified two different types of conjugal roles:

Changing roles

• During the early 20th century, conjugal roles were segregated as married women were expected to take responsibility for housework and childcare

  • Their husbands were expected to be the breadwinner

• Women's roles differed according to their social class

  • Many working-class women had to go out to work in addition to having housework and childcare responsibilities (dual-burden)

  • Middle-class women were not expected to work but instead supervise household employees (such as the maid or the nanny)

  • Amongst both classes, husbands were expected to be the breadwinner and families were male-dominated

• Sociologists argue that families are changing as they move towards equality in conjugal roles and relationships

  • Conjugal roles are becoming more joint (integrated conjugal roles) rather than segregated

Instrumental & expressive roles

• From a functionalist perspective, Parsons (1956) links sex roles within the family to its functions

  • In the nuclear family, the man takes the more instrumental role as the breadwinner

  • The woman takes the more expressive role as a housewife and mother, with responsibility for the household and for providing emotional support

  • These roles are important in the primary socialisation of children

  • Parsons believed these roles were allocated based on biological differences between men and women

    • Childbearing means that women are attuned to build strong relationships with their children

    • Men's assertiveness leads them to instrumental direction in the workplace

Key thinkers: Willmott and Young (1973) on the symmetrical family

• In their research, Willmott and Young (1973) wrote from a functionalist perspective

• They studied families in London using large-scale social surveys, where nearly 2000 people took part in a structured interview

• They also carried out a time budget study where participants were asked to complete a diary on the sequence, times and during of their activities

  • Using this primary data, they were able to compare how much time husbands and wives spent on domestic work

  • Only 411 people completed the diaries

  • Using the mixed methods approach, they were able to collect qualitative and quantitative data

• Willmott and Young developed the term symmetrical family as the typical family type in Britain, whereby:

  • there is more equality between spouses

  • spouses perform different tasks but each makes a similar contribution to the home

  • leisure time is spent together and much more home-centred

  • decision-making is shared, including financial decisions (deciding whether to move house or buy a particular car is a joint decision)

• Willmott and Young developed the principle of stratified diffusion to explain the changes in family life

  • Many social changes start at the top of the stratification system and filter downwards from the middle class to the working class

Reasons for the move to symmetry

• The rise of feminism since the 1960s has changed women's attitudes towards education and work and caused them to reject the housewife role

• Legal changes gave women more equality and status in the workplace, such as the Equal Pay Act (1970) and the Sex Discrimination Act (1975)

• Effective birth control means women can decide whether and when to have children

• Many women are financially independent due to entering the workplace, so they have more freedom, equality and status

• Men are more likely to spend time at home and become more involved with their family

• It is thought that men are more interested in DIY and home improvements than women

• Advances in technology has led to more home-based leisure activities (such as playing computer games, watching sports, and streaming services like Netflix)

Criticisms of the symmetrical family

• Liberal feminist Ann Oakley rejected the idea of the symmetrical family as she found little evidence of symmetry in her research

• In 1974, she conducted 40 in-depth interviews with housewives who came from working- and middle-class areas of London

• Oakley found that:

  • women in paid work still had the main responsibility for housework

  • 15% of husbands were heavily involved in housework

  • 25% of husbands were heavily involved in childcare

• Radical feminists Delphy and Leonard argued that family relationships involve economic exploitation as men benefit from the unpaid work of women inside the home

• People's behaviour has not changed much, despite shifts in attitudes towards gender roles

  • Media stereotyping portrays women as primarily responsible for many domestic tasks

  • Men still typically do home repairs, but women are more likely to do the laundry

  • Women still feel they do more of the housework and caring for family members; there is an unequal gender division of labour in the family

  • A new man is possibly hard to find

• Today, both partners tend to work so there are more dual-earner households than before

  • This means that women now work a double shift by having a paid job and doing most of the housework and childrearing

  • Duncombe and Marsden argue women continue to be exploited as women work a triple shift where emotional work is added to domestic work and paid work

• Marxists believe that women and men have unequal roles because that structure supports capitalism. Women who stay at home doing unpaid housework and emotional work are supporting capitalist society because they are providing healthy, happy workers