Gender Roles and Domestic Labour

The distribution of domestic labour — housework, childcare, and emotional work — within the family remains one of the most debated topics in family sociology. Despite significant social change, research consistently shows that women continue to do more unpaid work in the home than men, even when they are also in paid employment. This lesson examines the key theories, research findings, and debates surrounding gender roles and domestic labour for AQA A-Level Sociology (7192).

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Parsons: Instrumental and Expressive Roles

As discussed in Lesson 2, Talcott Parsons (1955) argued that within the nuclear family, men and women adopt complementary roles based on biological differences:

Role	Performed by	Function
Instrumental	Husband/father	Breadwinner; provides financially; links the family to the wider economy
Expressive	Wife/mother	Homemaker; provides emotional warmth; nurtures children; stabilises adult personalities

Parsons saw this as a functional arrangement — each partner specialises in what they are "naturally" suited to, maximising the efficiency and stability of the family.

Criticisms of Parsons

• Oakley (1974) argued that these roles are socially constructed, not biologically determined. Cross-cultural evidence shows enormous variation in gender roles.
• Young and Willmott (1973) argued that the family was becoming more symmetrical, with men doing more domestic work.
• Feminists argue that Parsons' model legitimises gender inequality by presenting women's subordination as natural and functional.

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Bott (1957): Conjugal Roles

Elizabeth Bott (1957) introduced the distinction between two types of conjugal roles (roles within a marriage or partnership):

Segregated conjugal roles: Husband and wife have clearly separated roles — the husband is the breadwinner and has his own leisure activities (e.g. the pub, football); the wife is responsible for housework and childcare. Social networks are also separate — each partner has their own friends and kin.

Joint conjugal roles: Husband and wife share domestic tasks and leisure activities. They have common friends and spend more time together. Decision-making is shared.

Bott found that segregated conjugal roles were more common in close-knit, working-class communities where extended kin networks were strong. Joint conjugal roles were more common among middle-class couples who had moved away from their kin and were more socially isolated, making them more dependent on each other.

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Young and Willmott (1973): The Symmetrical Family

Michael Young and Peter Willmott (1973) conducted a large-scale study of family life in London and argued that the family was evolving through four stages:

Stage	Period	Characteristics
Stage 1	Pre-industrial	Family as a unit of production; extended family; all members work together
Stage 2	Early industrial (19th century)	Disruption of the family; long working hours; poverty; but strong extended kin networks (especially mother-daughter)
Stage 3	Mid-20th century onwards	The symmetrical family — nuclear, privatised, home-centred; conjugal roles becoming more joint; husband helps with housework and childcare
Stage 4	Future (predicted)	The asymmetrical family — work-centred; husband's career dominates family life; seen initially among managing-director families

Young and Willmott argued that by the 1970s, the Stage 3 symmetrical family had become the dominant form, characterised by:

• Joint conjugal roles — husbands participating more in domestic work
• A home-centred lifestyle — couples spending more leisure time together at home (watching TV, DIY)
• Privatisation — the family becoming more self-contained, less reliant on wider kin and community

They found that 72% of husbands in their sample "helped" their wives with housework at least once a week (other than simply washing up).

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Oakley (1974): Critique of the Symmetrical Family

Ann Oakley (1974) strongly criticised Young and Willmott's claim that the family was becoming symmetrical. She argued that their methodology and conclusions were deeply flawed:

• "Helping at least once a week" is an extremely low threshold — a man who washes up once a week could be counted as sharing domestic labour. This gives a misleading impression of equality.
• Oakley's own research 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.
• Men tended to do the more enjoyable domestic tasks (playing with children, occasional cooking) while women did the routine, monotonous work (cleaning, ironing, laundry, daily childcare).
• The housewife role remained the primary identity for most married women, even those who also did paid work.

Oakley's Findings on Housework

Oakley (1974) interviewed 40 London housewives and found:

Finding	Detail
Hours worked	Housewives worked an average of 77 hours per week — far more than a full-time job
Satisfaction	Most women found housework monotonous and isolating, comparable to assembly-line work
Social construction	The housewife role was not "natural" but the product of industrialisation, which separated home from workplace
Gender socialisation	Girls are socialised into domestic roles from an early age through toys, media, and parental expectations

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The Triple Shift

Duncombe and Marsden (1995) argued that women perform a triple shift:

Shift	Type of Work
First shift	Paid employment (going out to work)
Second shift	Domestic labour (housework, cooking, cleaning, childcare)
Third shift	Emotional work (managing the emotional wellbeing of family members — listening, comforting, resolving conflicts, maintaining relationships)