Conjugal Roles

The division of labour in marriage

Segregated and Joint roles

Segregated – husbands go out to work, wives responsible for housework and childcare. Leisure time also spent apart – the “traditional” picture.

Joint – sharing of roles. Women work, men share domestic tasks. More likely to spend leisure together too

Functionalists and “symmetry”

Functionalists such as Parsons, Wilmott and Young have argued that industrialisation has led to egalitarian marriage, joint conjugal roles in the symmetrical nuclear family

Critiques of functionalist view Anne Oakley highly critical of

methodology of W and Y. Barrett argues women’s work

outside the home limited to that which is compatible with family commitments (patriarchical ideology

Pahl even unemployed men expect their wives to do the bulk of the housework

Critiques of functionalist view 2 Stephen Edgell – wives still defer to

husbands in decision making Lydia Morris – unemployed men

even less likely to share domestic tasks – a threat to their “masculinity” already damaged by unemployment

Elston – only a small minority of professional couple have joint conjugal roles

Conclusions

There is some evidence of change in conjugal roles

However it is clear that the equality and symmetry the functionalists speak of is somewhat idealised.

Now try the Cloze activity