Examine some of the ways in which the role of fathers in families has changed

Examine some of the ways in which the role of fathers in families has changed

The domestic division of labour refers to the roles that men and women play in relation to housework, childcare and paid work. According to familial ideology, the nuclear family is most successful when there is a clear segregation (separation and distinction from one another) of gender roles.
In Talcott Parson’s functionalist model, there is a clear division between the spouses’ role. The husband is said to have an instrumental role, which is geared towards achieving success at work in order to provide for the family’s financial needs; he is the breadwinner. The wife, however, has an expressive role, geared towards primary socialisation of the children and meeting the family’s emotional needs; she is the homemaker and a fulltime housewife rather than a wage earner.

Elizabeth Bott claimed that there are two types of conjugal roles, which are roles within marriage. Her idea of segregated conjugal roles supports Parson’s model. These roles refer to when the couple have separate roles, consisting of the male breadwinner and the female house maker/carer; the couple’s leisure activities also tend to be separate.
However, the other type of conjugal role, called joint conjugal roles, disputes Parson’s model. This is where the couple share tasks such as housework and childcare and spend their leisure time together.

Young and Willmott see the family as gradually improving for all its members, becoming more equal and democratic. They argue that the modern family is what they call a ‘symmetrical family’, which is a family that has strong bonds between married or cohabiting partners, with the relationship and roles becoming more similar and less patriarchal and thus much more an equally balances partnership of equals; therefore there has been a long-term trend away from segregated conjugal roles and towards joint conjugal roles.

Sociologists have derived explanations as to why these changes have occurred. One explanation is that there has been a decline of the close-knit extended family due to there being more geographical and social mobility in contemporary society. Geographical mobility refers to when people move from one place to another and social mobility is when people change position or status in a hierarchy or stratification system. This means there is less pressure from kin on newly married or cohabiting couples to retain traditional roles, making it easier to adopt new roles in a relationship. With the weakened influence of the close-knit extended family, there is an increase in dependence upon each other, allowing men and women to adopt new roles to make living together more efficient.

Another explanation pertains to the fact that women’s status and rights have been improved, with most women now in paid employment (increasing their independence and authority in the family), may encourage men to accept women more as equals and not simply as housewives and mothers. Women have also become more assertive in demanding that household tasks are shared. Gershuny and Laurie found that as wives moved into paid employment or from part-time to full-time work, they did less housework, and men did a bit more. This was therefore seen as some progress in reducing gender inequalities in the home; however this was a very slow process and was leading to only small reductions.

However, feminist sociologists reject this ‘march of progress’ view; arguing that little has changed as men and women still remain unequal within the family, with women still doing most of the housework. They argue that this is due to the family and society being male-domination i.e. patriarchal. Ann Oakley criticises Young and Willmott’s view that the family is now symmetrical, claiming that their views are exaggerated. She suggested that the way they framed questions produced figures that exaggerated how much housework men were doing.
Ann Oakley studied women’s domestic work in the same way as earlier male sociologists had studied men’s paid work. She found that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework, and only 25% had a high level of participation in childcare, thus disputing the view that the family has moved towards symmetry. Husbands were more likely to share in childcare than in housework, but only in its more pleasurable aspects. She pointed out that even when men were doing some domestic tasks, this was seen as ‘helping’ and the main responsibility was still the wife’s.