Examine the factors affecting power relationships and the division of labour between couples Domestic labour is housework, childcare and paid work. In 1955, Parsons suggested that the husband and wife have different roles within the family; the man’s role was named instrumental. He is expected to achieve success at work and financially support the family whereas the wife was expected to look after the house, raise the children emotionally and cook. This was named the expressive role. Parsons said that these roles made things ‘nice and functional’.
EXAMINE THE VIEW THAT DIVISION OF LABOUR BETWEEN COUPLES HAVE BEEN MORE OR LESS EQUAL. [24 MARKS] Domestic division of labour means the gender roles of men and women played in relation to housework, childcare and paid work. For example, men are expected to do more DIY work while women are expected to do the housework and take care of the child by providing emotional support to them. Some sociologists believe that families nowadays are moving towards equality and that the families are becoming symmetrical. A symmetrical family is a family where ale the chores are shared equally between couples.
Functionalist Murdock suggested as children we are socialised into societies shared norms and values and he believed that males provide the economic roles and females provided the expressive role. Therefore it is natural for women to play the expressive role in the household looking after the family’s emotional needs. However, radical feminist Ann Oakley argues that the role of the housewife is a social construction and isn’t linked to the female role. The housewife role makes sure that women stay inferior to men making it difficult for them have careers. Women carry out the triple burden in the household; the domestic labour, emotional labour, and paid labour.
By the 1990s lone-parent mothers had a 2 in 3 chance of being poor. Women's greater life expectancy, their lower wages, lack of private pensions and disrupted employment patterns also help to explain why the majority of the elderly poor are women. At the other end of the scale, families in the top 20% of income brackets are most likely to contain a married couple (at least one of whom generally has a university degree), live in a major city, and own a home and a car. Women in these families, families that are the most likely to conform to the stereotypical but distorted image of the family, tend to be either professionals and managers with high-paying jobs, or they stay out of the labour force. Today the majority of married women are working or are actively looking
350,000 women were in unions in 1914, but 600,000 by 1918. Although many women found themselves earning good wages for the first time during the war, women were always paid less than men, and were not promoted as often as their male colleagues. The war did lead to real changes in social attitudes. Women had more freedom after the war. Their clothing became much simpler, with shorter skirts and sleeves.
The father would go out to be the “breadwinner” whilst the mother would stay at home to support the family emotionally and domestically such as cooking food and the safeguarding of children. This is explained by the warm bath theory with the mother being the “bath” or “backbone” of the family whilst she provides the father and children with the support. Famous sociologist George Peter Murdock has his own view of the family within functionalism. His definition of the family was a group of people characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship and one or more children, own or adopted, of the socially cohabiting adults.
Death rates from all cancers has fallen twice as fast for men than women. Therefore meaning that health is very unequal for both gender’s. Gender stereotypes have a huge impact in the equalness of men and women, As women are sometimes still seen as the primary carers of children. Women’s jobs are usually associated with the 4 C’s, caring, cleaning, catering and cash registers. Women are often stereotyped into certain jobs and out of others yet they make up more than 50% of the workforce.
Remarriages are 50% more likely to divorce in the first five years compared to first marriages. There are a numbers of factors that contribute to this trend and cause the home to be unstable. The children feel at fault for their parents break-up, the stepchildren are constantly trying to figure out their position in the family structure, some children show hostility towards the stepparent and both stepparents tend to show favoritism towards their own children. Unfortunately, the women and children are the ones that suffer the most economically and academically because according to the AACC, Only Mise 3 half of the divorced men in America pay their full child support responsibility, one- quarter make partial inconsistent payment, and one-quarter pays nothing at all. Also, children of divorced parents drop out of school at twice the rate of children from
According to Divorce Rate, “between the ages of 20 to 29 the divorce rate is greater than couples 30 and older.” Some statistics say at least 66 percent of younger couples end up divorced because of childless issues. The only thing that tends to hold the marriage together would be love. Yet, some say that love tends to fade. While others say the contrary. Couples that have children tend to have a lower divorce rate.
Not by his own choice, but by the way life has put him in that place. Along with many others, people find themselves possessing gender roles that they aren't naturally accustom to them for a vast amount of reasons; being their family expectations, the way the think society tells them to be, or any other reason. He is home tending to the what we normally think is the womanly duties; cleaning, picking up the kids from school, cooking, and many other things. He is the one that gathers all the kids up around the dinner table for supper. This clearly depicts how life can be not what's expected of people, but is still able to work efficiently.