The common perception of marriage is that it was originally weighted heavily in favour of the male member of the couple, and that this has shifted slowly to a more even-handed arrangement in recent years. This essay will examine the question of how accurate this belief really is. Historically, marriage was highly unequal. While the husband took the role of breadwinner and went out to earn the necessary money to support the family, his wife was expected to stay at home and look after the more mundane tasks that make up the day-to-day running of a household. As the former role was commonly seen as more valuable than the latter, this often meant that the husband held most of the power, such as deciding where they would live, how resources were distributed, etc.
Functionalists like Fletcher believed that divorce was rising because people were raising their expectations in marriage, this suggests that higher divorce rates means higher value of marriage. Women petition for 70% of divorces this shows that the women may be increasingly likely to feel dissatisfied with marriage. The unequal distribution of tasks may be a key factor for example Delphy and Leonard suggest that the woman already performed 57 unpaid roles for their partner. This places a great deal of pressure on the wife leading them to believe that divorce is the key to lift this burden off their shoulders. Couples also had fewer children which again may mean that there is less to keep them together leading to an increase in
If paid family leave is extended to both partners it would help reduce gender differences. Bosses would stop penalizing their workers because both males and females would be taking the leave. If more workplaces would offer this to their employers it would hep society become accustomed to this new role fathers should have been playing in the first place. If men would take leave as well as women, they could both have the same achievements at work, such as how much income they recieve. Families are often influenced by the media portrayal of the way women should run their families.
However, this period where so many great changes had been made in the church, in literature, and in all other artistic areas, women took a big step backward in their fight for equality. Women were thought of as property, owned first by their fathers, and then their husbands. This is only true, however, for the upper-class. Commoners during this time were not affected by the new social reforms. Lower class women still could own properties and shared many responsibilities with their husbands.
Assess the argument that state policy has largely failed to protect the institution of the family I think that state policy although appears to benefit people with families and their families; it is not always the case. An example of how state policy does not protect the institution is the Divorce Law Act. This act allows for a quicker, cheaper way of getting a divorce and allows divorce to be obtained much easier. This does not protect the institution of family because before this act came into place most people would try to work out the problems within their marriage because divorce was a long and expensive process. However, with the new act and its simplicity people are no longer trying to fix their marriages and are just getting divorced which leads to the breakdowns of many family units.
With a mother who chooses to spend much of her time outside the confines of a family home for whatever reason you can expect to see many changes. Another reason mothers have become less dependent on their husbands is because the divorce rate has more than doubled in the last 60 years. It is still agreed that a happy marriage is something to strive for and it is all around better for the family, though the divorce rate is almost at its peek. The woman’s job in the 50’s was to make the family happy and to steer it away from divorce at all possible, and since the woman’s role has changed so has the rate of divorce. Adultery, abuse, and unhappiness are not any less common now than it was 60 years ago, but it is now less tolerated.
Furthermore, this would lead to a lot of people expecting more from relationships after getting divorced, as they wouldn't want to fall victim to what cause their last marriage to end again. This is part of the high expectations people now expect from relationships. Young people may have experienced divorce or bad relationships in their life, so they do not want to fall into it themselves, making them wary of marriage. Sue Sharpe's study in the early 1970s showed that young girl's main concerns were 'love, marriage, husbands, children, jobs' in that order. When she then returned in the 90s she found that the list had flipped, with jobs and careers being in first place.
For example – as marriages were a crucial part of family honour, prestige and not to mention political alliances and economical partnership it was essential that a father find a suitable groom and the only way that was access to vast finance for a dowry as it was seen the larger the dowry, the better status of marriage. The more female offspring the father of family had, the more likely the money would run out and no more dowries could be afforded and therefore the daughters had two options – to become nuns or prostitutes but in most cases this was both. From thereon they were just dumped in convents and most of those nuns didn’t care for
World Wars I and II and the Great Depression led to more women working outside the home. After these events, divorce rates soared. As divorce became more common, it lost its mark of disgrace, and people became more willing to end marriages on emotional grounds, such as cruelty. Since the early 1970s, "no-fault" divorce has allowed couples to end marriages because of incompatibility—the inability to get along—without requiring proof of adultery or some other specific offense. The United States is not the only country in which divorce rates are rising.
Edgell says that women do most decision making frequently on a probably daily basis, but their decisions go unnoticed whereas men make fewer decisions more infrequently but they seem to be the more important decisions such as moving house or buying a car or other serious financial decisions. A radical feminist would say that Edgells study just outlines the fact that we are living in a patriarchal society and that men are viewed more highly and have more power and control in the relationship, and that women are just used for everyday menial tasks. In conclusion, there is much to y for both sides of the argument but it is difficult to decide either way. It appears that there is some equality but we have a long way to go before actual