The Division Of Labour Within Couples

The Division Of Labour Within Couples

Wilmott and Young carried out their research in London between 1950

and 1970. They believe that the family as we know it has developed and

evolved through three stages to become as it is today.

In the first stage, the Pre-Industrial family was extended and

everyone lived and worked together. They therefore had joint conjugal

roles, meaning they shared duties. In the second stage, the Early

Industrial family were extended families beginning to become

geographically mobile, dying out and becoming less common. In this

stage, there were segregated conjugal roles; the husband was

uninvolved with the raising of children and household work, but was

the breadwinner of the family going out to earn money. Men spent their

leisure time away from home, socialising with work mates and the

females spent their time at home, only socialising with female kin and

neighbours. In the third stage, the Symmetrical Family had appeared,

once again with joint conjugal roles.

According to Wilmott and Young, this is the type of family most people

of today are living in. Partners share responsibility for decisions

that would affect the whole family, and men and women spend more time

at home, with men now being involved with the raising of children and

household work. Wilmott and Young believe that the family went from

segregated to joint conjugal roles due to the female retracting from

outside relationships with other female kin and neighbours and drawing

the husband into the family circle and letting him become more home

centred. They argue that the development of the family has occurred

because of a process called ...

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...ikely to take an active part in

housework and childcare if their wife had a paid job. But they also

found that 54% of women who worked full time and 77% of women who

worked part time still did all or most of the housework and childcare.

However, although all four looked at domestic division of labour and

came up with the same results, housework and childcare produce a

picture that women do more work than men. What is not shown is that

tasks such as cleaning the car or DIY take up more time and more

effort than housework and childcare and so that reveals that when men

do work, they work longer and harder than women. Also, the paid hours

for men tend to be longer than women's unpaid household duties and the

difference in hours in paid work and the amount of work women do with

housework and childcare was not that great.