OCR A-Level Sociology H580
Introducing Socialisation, Culture and Identity
Families and RelationshipsComponent 01
Youth SubculturesComponent 01
MediaComponent 01
Research Methods and Researching Social Inequalities
Understanding Social Inequalities
Globalisation and the Digital Social World
Crime and DevianceComponent 03
EducationComponent 03
Religion, Belief and FaithComponent 03
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.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
Define the term conjugal roles.
What did Parsons mean by instrumental and expressive roles?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 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
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
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
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
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
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.
Other ways to work this
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