Conjugal Roles

1. Conjugal Roles The division of labour in marriage

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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