In contrast, Anne Oakley claimed that conjugal roles were not altering significantly. After interviewing forty women, with young children, they saw their responsibilities as housework and childcare, receiving little help from husbands. This illustrated a clear partition of labour, along gender lines. Oakley dismissed Young and Willmott’s theory, as it was hardly persuasive evidence of ‘male domestication’
My second concept is conjugal roles, twenty and thirty years later. Research by Fiona Devine (1992) and Allan & Crow (2001) shows increased contributions by men in domestic tasks, however not significant contributions. This research, presents that most women still become full time mothers and housewives for a period of time, although this is getting shorter. The majority take up part time work, when their youngest child goes to school. Often the man’s share of household labour increases at this time. As the increased donation is not significant, most working wives carry a dual burden - paid employment and domestic labour. It appears that the period of full time housework and childcare sets a pattern for the future.
In 1992, Gershuny found a trend towards greater equality in the domestic division of labour. The increase is greatest when wives are in full time employment. His conclusion is that women still bear the burden of domestic labour, with a gradual trend towards greater equality. He suggests there is a process of lagged adaptation – a time lag between women taking up paid employment and men making a greater contribution to domestic labour.
In his estimation it may take a generation or more before men ‘catch up’ and make an equal contribution.
Methodology - 410 words
For my study, into ‘conjugal roles in the 21st century’ I would carry out my research in the form of an interview. This is when a series of questions are asked directly by the researcher to the respondent. However, an interview can also be conducted as a discussion.
Sociologists generally use interviews if the subject of enquiry is ‘complex’.
The type of interview I would use would be unstructured, this will enable the researcher to only have a central area for discussion, this being ‘conjugal roles’, allowing applicable questions to be added if necessary.
The interview would be transcribed (recorded on tape) as not to disturb the flow of the interview.
Choosing my participants, I would use ‘systematic sampling’. This is when participants are chosen, on the basis, of for example them being the every third couple on a list. By doing this, I wouldn’t be choosing them myself and I couldn’t be classed as being biased, for choosing one couple, over another. Also, all the couples on the list would be in a situation where both partners are working full time, with the children in childcare. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that the women should be doing the majority of household chores and childcare.
In addition, by interviewing couples collectively, I will be reducing half the time I would use, if I interviewed participants individually. I would next be able to interview twice as many couples. These statistics would subsequently be based on a much larger scale, when demonstrated on graphs or tables.
Below are the type of questions I would ask:
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In your household, who would you say does the majority of chores on a weekly basis?
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Do you feel that the child care of your children, after work hours is divided equally?
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Do you believe that family life, is becoming symmetrical, or that chores are still divided by gender?
Another way of gathering research is by selecting participants, for them to fill out a survey/questionnaire. This enables the right questions which unearth exactly the information wanted, that the questions are asked in a clear and simple manner, which can be understood by the people completing the questionnaire and that it is as short as possible, since people typically cannot be bothered to spend a long time completing these. Conversely, I find this to be on a less, of a one-to-one basis, in contrast with an interview, which wouldn’t give an as in depth approach.
Potential Problems - 288 words
When using an interview for research purposes underlying potential problems exist.
In an interview, there is no reason why people should tell the truth to researchers, this is predominantly accurate when a sensitive issue is being researched. For example when discussing my topic, not all couples would be happy enough to admit, to the flaws in their married family life. Couples may embellish or under exaggerate when answering questions, to impress the researcher. Equally these points can cause researcher’s evidence to be invalid.
Unstructured interviews such as mine, are generally recorded and transcribed, this in total needs a substantial amount of time. Sociologists, Tizard & Hughes (1991) recorded interviews with pupils, to explore their learning methods. For each hour of tape, this took 17hours to transcribe and verify. But in addition writing down replies, whilst interviewing participants can disturb the flow of the interview.
The aim of the research process is to gain sufficient interviews for the investigator to be able to make an accurate generalization. Conversely, if interviews are in fact different from each other as a consequence of the interaction, then it is incorrect to make generalizations.
Both questionnaires and interviews share the problem of the values of the researcher, adding his/her questions. The two important problems used here is using leading questions and using loaded words.
Leading questions are when a researcher can influence the answer of the participant in the way the question is asked. For example the question “Wouldn’t you agree that…” is worded to sound like the right answer.
Loaded words and phrases, used when researchers use particular forms of language that either indicate a viewpoint, or will generate a particular positive or negative response, e.g. life (positive) & death (negative).