1. Feminism and the Household
Sociology
Feminism and the Household

2. Objectives:
To introduce the concepts of the ‘Symmetrical Family’ and the ‘March of Progress.’
To assess whether couples are becoming more equal.

3. Young and Willmott (1973)
Take a ‘March of Progress’ view of the history of the family.
See family life as generally improving for all its members.
Argue the long term trend is away from segregated conjugal roles and towards joint conjugal roles and the ‘symmetrical family’.
Symmetrical family = one in which the roles of husbands and wives are similar

4. Symmetrical family
Women now go out to work – although this may be part-time.
Men now help with housework and childcare.
Couples now spend leisure time together instead of separately
More common among younger couples, those isolated from extended family

5. Why? Rise of the symmetrical family is the result of social changes:
Changes in women’s position – work
Geographical mobility – couples living away from where they grew up
New technology and labour saving devices
Higher standards of living
How might geographical mobility help to give rise to symmetrical families?

6. Feminist view of housework
Feminist sociologists reject the ‘march of progress’ view.
Men and women are unequal and women still do most of the housework.
This is because the family and society are male-dominated or patriarchal
Ann Oakley criticised Young and Willmott’s view – although they said that husbands interviewed ‘helped’ wives, this may have been taking the children for a walk or making breakfast on one occasion – not symmetry.

7. Ann Oakley (1974)
Found only 15% of men had a high level of participation in housework.
Only 25% had a high level of participation in childcare. This may have been the more fun parts like playing with the kids rather than housework.
Research by Mary Boulton (1983) supports this – she found fewer than 20% of husbands had a major role in childcare. She argued that Young and Willmott focused on tasks rather than responsibilities.
Says the ‘housewife’ role is a social construct, not natural like the functionalist and New Right view.

8. Alan Warde and Kevin Hetherington (1993)
Found that sex-typing of domestic tasks remained strong
Wives were 30 x more likely to have been the last person to have done the washing
Husbands 4 x more likely to have been the last person to have washed the car.
Generally, men would only carry out routine ‘female’ tasks when their partners were not around to do them
Slight change of attitude among younger men – less likely to assume that women do the housework.

9. Future Foundation study (2000)
Partially supports Warde and Hetherington.
Survey of 1000 adults found that 60% of men claimed to do more housework than their father.
75% of women claimed to do less housework than their mother.
BUT – women still do more housework than men and there are still gender differences in the amounts of time spent on particular household chores. Women spend more time than men.

10. Women, Parenting and Work
Read through the statistics and answer the questions on the sheet as far as possible.  

11. Homework - research
‘Are couples becoming more equal?’
Design a questionnaire using the questions given and use it to interview 2 people each.
We will pool our results after half term.