The DDL Debate (Week23)

Question 1

Orgins of the Debate

Functionalists

Answer 1

• Early functionalist writers argued that there was a ‘natural’ division of labour within the family.
• Parsons (1959) ‘The social structure of the family’ talks about a division between the males performing an Instrumental role and the females performing the expressive role.
• For Functionalists these two roles were seen as complementary

Question 2

The Nest Family

Edward Shorter

Answer 2

“The nuclear family was a nest. Warm and sheltering, it kept the children secure from the pressures of the outside adult world, and gave the men an evening refuge from the icy blast of competition. And as the nuclear family rose in the nineteenth century, women liked it too, because it let them pull back from the grinding exertions of farm work, or the place at the mill, and devote themselves to child care.”

Question 3

Young & Willmott And their studies (1960s-1970s)

Answer 3

• They studied family life in London
• Attempted to trace it’s development from pre-industrial England to the 1970s.
• This became known as the 4 stages of family life.

Question 4

Young & Willmott

Stage 1 of Family Life

Answer 4

• The Stage 1 Pre-industrial Family is a unit of production.
• The husband, wife and any unmarried children work as a team, typically in agriculture or textiles.
• This type of family disappears with the Industrial Revolution

Question 5

Young & Willmott

Second Stage of Family Life

Answer 5

• Second stage = early Industrial Family developing throughout the 19th century - reaching its peak in the early 20th century.
• family ceases to be a unit of production with members being employed outside the family.
• As a result the family reached out to wider extended family for support as an insurance mechanism.
• This extension was achieved by networks created by women to provide support for children. eg. mothers remained close to their married daughters and provided practical support.
• Bonds between husbans and wife were weaker.
• Clear distinct roles emerged - women involved in childcare and men wage earners with little involvement in the home.
• Due to early male mortality many families became female headed.
• In Young & Willmotts study they found this mutual support by women and often newly-married couples would move in with the mother/father of the bride.

Question 6

Stage 3 of family life

Young & Willmott

Answer 6

• They called this stage ‘The Symmetrical family’
• Symmetry refers to being like a mirror-image.
• Key characteristic = the separation of the nuclear family from the extended family. This increases with the rise of geographical mobility.
• As a result women can no longer call on support from other female relatives and the male returns to a role within the household.
• Inside Symmetrical family life it’s very family-centred.
• Leisure is mainly home-based and relations between husband and wife are strong.
• “They shared their work, they shared their time” - This means that male and females took part in paid employment and both also took part in housework and childcare.

Question 7

March of Progress - Young & Willmott

Answer 7

The reasons for the change in both genders participating in all roles are:
* Increase in male wages - making the family more independent/less in need of support from extended family.
* Greater support by the welfare state - means the family can become independent from extended family.
* Increasing geographical mobility -extended family may no longer be able to provide daily assistance.
* Reduction in the number of children - meant there was a greater opportunity for women to seek paid employment.
* Higher living standards - the home became a more desirable place so husbands spent more time in them.

Question 8

The Symmetrical Family - Stratified Diffusion

Young & Willmott

Answer 8

• They argue the symmetrical family comes into society as a result of a Principle of Stratified Diffusion.
• This means that what happens at the top of the social tree then gets copied by those below.
• The Symmetrical family emerges first in the middle class and then down to the working class.
• They argue that home-centredness became more attractive for the working class because they had less interesting jobs.

Question 9

Stage 4 Family Life

Young & Willmott

Answer 9

• They argue that managing directors are work-centred rather than home-centred
• The relationship between husbands and wives is fairly asymmetrical > husband pursuing leisure activities with workmates and wives adopting traditional housewife/mother roles.
• Apply the Principle of Stratified Diffusion - they suggest that with technology as more jobs become interesting this may diffuse throughout society.

Question 10

Criticisms of Young and Willmott

Answer 10

• Many feminists have been critical of the ideas of the symmetrical family as this concept suggests some equality between mne and women within the family.
• There are criticism centred on the Stage 4 family. It’s suggested that in fact most women continue to work outside the home and there are few families that can afford to have a non-employed female for large periods of time.

Question 11

Ann Oakley - Critiques the Symmetrical family

Answer 11

• She was determined to analyse the work done by women inside the home, using the ideas and concepts developed initially to discuss paid employment and the kinds of jobs men did.
• She compared the work done by women as housewives with that done by male factory workers.
• She argued that in terms of Monotony, Fragmentation (not being able to control all elements of a job) and speed (pressure to work faster) housewives suffered higher levels of these than male workers.
• She also argued that the role of housewife is something exclusively applied to women and in contrast to the male factory workers who get paid, housewives do not.

Question 12

Ann Oakley - Characteristic features of the Housewife role

Answer 12

• Exclusive allocation to women
• Association with economic dependence because it is not paid
• Status as non-work or its opposition to ‘real’ (ie) paid work
• Its primacy to women, that is, a priority over other possible roles

Question 13

Ann Oakley - Critisms of Young & Willmott

Answer 13

• She argues there are problems in the methodology that led Young & Willmott to talk of evidence of the Symmetrical family
• She agues with one piece of evidence they cite (72% of husbands helped their wives).
• This does not mean took on the task and it’s still assumed to be the primary responsiblity of the wife to conduct housework.
• More support was related to childcare rather than general housework.
• She found - it was more common in middle-class families than in working-class families for men to help. (this is contrary to the Principle of Stratified Diffusion since no evidence it is moving down to working class)
• She found little evidence to support the idea of a Symmetrical Family - instead argues that there is still clear evidence of a gendered domestic division of labour (women are expected to undertake the majority of unpaid housework tasks).

Question 14

Stephen Edgell - Middle Class Couples

Answer 14

• In 1980 Stephen Edgell set out to test the idea that symmetry first emerged among Middle-class couples.
• He found that there were distinct differences in decision-making within relationships.
• Males took the lead in decisions which had high status (moving house or buying a new car).
• Females took lead in decisions which had low status eg, deciding what to have for dinner or doing the weekly shop.
• No couples in his sample were classified as having joint conjugal roles relating to housework - 44.6% of them were so classified in relation to childcare.

Question 15

Jan Pahl-Money & Marriage - 4 ways family deal with money

Answer 15

• Jan Pahl concentrated on decisions concerning money.
• She argues that there are 4 main ways families can deal with money:
  1. Husband-control
  2. wife-control
  3. husband-controlled pooling
  4. wife-controlled pooling
  (Pooling - means where there was a joint account)

Question 16

Jan Pahl - Money & Marriage

Answer 16

• She argues that the situation where women gained control occured where the household had very low income.
• The key factor in determining who controlled the finances was the % difference in level of wages of male and female.
• When female wages were similar to the males, her power over money increased.
• If there were great inequalities in male and females incomes, the power of the wife declined.
• This means for males their relative power increases with their income.
• For females an increase in household income can lead to a loss of power.
• Where their income is close to the males this usually indicates that the male is unemployed or a low-earner.
• Women have the choice of living in luxury with a high-earning male but with little power or alternatively to have power but live in poverty.
• Males do not face this dilemma since an increase in their income also leads to an increase in their power.

Question 17

Lydia Morris - Household financial management in Hartlepool

Answer 17

• She conducted a study on how couples deal with their finances.
• She found that changes in employment had led to decline of the male breadwinner role but this had not changed gender roles.
• Most employment opportunities for women were part-time and when women took on such jobs, men did not take on their household responsibilities.
• She found that women got a greater say in financial matters but only a say in poverty.

Question 18

Finch and Mason (1993) - Family Responsibilities

Answer 18

• They looked at ways families negotiated responsibilities
• They found no general rules, so emphasise the importance of negotiations
• In particular - men and women both provided care for spouses, it was up to the daughters/daughters-in-law to care for elederly relatives.

Question 19

Emotional Labour - Arlie Hochschild

Answer 19

• She published a book called ‘The Second shift’ in 1989
• She argues that the requirements of emotional magagement and empasis on looks and appearance are much more prevalent in the types of jobs that women do than men.
• She argues that men are reluctant to get involved in childcare around the home and this remains primarily done by women
• In both women have to call upon their emotional skills
• She now talks about this now becoming a triple shift.
• Women not only have to engage in paid employment and childcare but also in relationship maintenance.

Question 20

Duncombe & Marsden - Triple Shift

Answer 20

• They argue that the ‘triple shift’ women now face concerns the need to use emotional labour to keep their relationships going.
• There is evidence that women are dissatisfied by the emotional illiteracy of their partners and have to exert effort to keep their relationships going.

Question 21

Domestic Division of Labour Statistics

Answer 21

Time Use Survey 2003 & 2005:
* Women spend 3h avg on housework a day - men spend 1h 40m avg
* Men work/study for 4h 20m a day - women spend 2h 30m a day
* Men spend 3h 45m per day on employment - women spend 2h 26m
* 2/5 men do no do the ironing/laundry - the proportion of women who don’t do these tasks is fewer than 1/12.
* 1/2 of women say they don’t do DIY repair work - 16% of men don’t do DIY repairs

Question 22

Impact of caring on Economic activity

Answer 22

• The presence of children is a key factor influencing decisions about paid employment.
• Government classifies those outside employment as economically inactive.
• Those who are unemployed but looking for a job are counted as economically active but those who are housewives/carers are counted as economically inactive (since not looking for a job).
• In 2001 2.4 million working-age people were economically inactive and looking after the family or the home, 2.2 million of these people were women.
• 12% of working-age women are economically inactive in 2002 looking after a family or home compared with 17% in 1992

Question 23

Fall in Economic Inactivity

Answer 23

• some evidence that the number of women economically inactive because of childcare is falling.
• This is particularly evident for those women aged 25-34.
• The key implication is that the full-time housewife mother role is disappearing and women are now under increasing pressure to return to paid employment even if they have children.