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Families and Relationships

Conjugal roles and the domestic division of labour

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 01

Overview

Recall questions on conjugal roles and Bott's segregated and joint roles, Parsons's instrumental and expressive roles, the domestic division of labour, Young and Willmott's symmetrical family and stratified diffusion, Oakley's challenge, the dual burden and triple shift, Gershuny's lagged adaptation, material and cultural explanations, and the commercialisation of housework.

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Answer each one before you reveal it.

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What is Jonathan Gershuny's 'lagged adaptation' argument?

Key term

Define the term conjugal roles.

Who and when

What did Parsons mean by instrumental and expressive roles?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    Define the term conjugal roles.

    Model answer

    Conjugal roles are the domestic roles and responsibilities taken on by the partners in a couple.

  2. 2

    Distinguish between segregated and joint conjugal roles, and who drew the distinction.

    Model answer

    Elizabeth Bott distinguished segregated roles, where partners have separate tasks and separate leisure, from joint roles, where they share tasks and spend leisure time together.

  3. 3

    What did Parsons mean by instrumental and expressive roles?

    Model answer

    Parsons argued the husband takes the instrumental role of breadwinner providing for the family, while the wife takes the expressive role of caring for the family's emotional needs and socialising the children.

  4. 4

    What is the domestic division of labour?

    Model answer

    It is the way household tasks, childcare and emotional work are shared out between partners.

  5. 5

    What did Young and Willmott mean by the symmetrical family?

    Model answer

    They argued the modern family had reached a stage in which the roles of husband and wife, while not identical, had become more similar: both did paid work, both shared housework and childcare, and leisure was spent together in the home.

  6. 6

    Explain Young and Willmott's principle of stratified diffusion.

    Model answer

    They argued that changes such as symmetry begin in the higher social classes and gradually spread downwards through the class structure over time.

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AVictims may fear reprisal, or feel shame or economic dependence.
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CMany incidents are never reported or recorded.

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