Outline and explain how the roles of women in the families may have altered since 1945. [15]

However, Michael Young and Peter Willmott (1962) argued that men were now taking a greater share in domestic tasks around the house and with the children and that more wives were becoming wage earners. Young and Willmott were not the only ones who rejected Parsons View as Feminists and Sociologists state that the division of labour was only beneficial for men.

Women’s roles began to change as Joint conjugal roles were introduced into society. There was a rise of the ‘New Man’ as men began helping out with the chores, helping raising the kids and the roles in the family became more balanced. In 1973, Young and Willmott took a ‘march of progress‘view of the history of family life and saw it as gradually improving. They argued that there had been a long –term trend away from segregated conjugal roles and new trends towards joint conjugal roles and the ‘symmetrical family’. This was a clear alteration from the conjugal roles of women in families in 1945.

However, in 1974, a feminist called Ann Oakley criticised Young and Willmott’s view and claimed that the rise of the ‘New Man’ was exaggerated greatly. In Oakley’s research, she found that most of the husbands that they interviewed ‘helped’, but only with the fun activities. She discovered that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework which contradicts Young and Willmott’s theory that joint conjugal roles were over-powering separate conjugal roles. Also Oakley stated that the housewife role was socially constructed, rather than being women’s ‘natural’ role, which again contradicts Parsons Theory.

However, Young and Willmott found that the symmetrical family was more common among younger couples, especially those who cohabit. They believed this was because of the introduction of the ‘New Man’, role models in the mass media, the changes in women’s positions in society, geographical mobility;  where people were moving away from communities where they had grown up , meaning they were forced to help each other, especially as there was a significant decline in the extended family . Also the introduction of labour saving devices and new technology made it easier for men to contribute to the housework and saved a lot of time for women. These improvements show a beneficial contrast from the roles of women in 1945.

However, the 1993 research from Warde and Kevin Hetherington stated that sex-typing of domestic tasks remained strong as men were more likely to wash the car and take out the bins and women were more likely to do the ironing and the cleaning. They found that women were 30 times more likely to be the last person to have done the washing. This research underlines that even though there had be a change in the conjugal roles, women were still the main ‘Homemakers’.

I conclude that the roles of women have changed from 1945 as women have gained more freedom by leaving the house and working and the divided conjugal roles have been made less common in the present day as the world is more characterised by full-time and part-time workers of both sexes. The introduction of the ‘New Man’ changed people’s views that women are the ‘Homemakers’ and men are the ‘Breadwinners’ which led to a ‘Genderquake’. However, many people argue that there is still a clear division between the conjugal roles in the house as women are still expected to do the household chores and look after the kids and men are still expected to be the ‘Breadwinners’.