Ann Oakley claims that the family is not symmetrical, roles are still segregated and that roles are socially constructed, stemming from the fact the society and the family are patriarchal.
She criticises Willmot and Young’s claim by saying that they are exaggerated. She says that their theory that husbands ‘help’ around the home is not accurate, as help could simply mean that they do a bit of ironing or take the children out once a week. In light of Willmott and Young’s inaccuracy she conducted her own research on 40 housewives between the ages of 20 and 30, and found some evidence of husbands helping around the home, but no evidence of a symmetry trend, being that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework and only 25% participated in a high level of childcare. Also from her research she found that industrialisation lead to the segregation of family roles around the home.
Mary Boulton also suggests that many surveys done exaggerate how much childcare is actually done by husbands. Her argument is that while men may ‘help’ with childcare, it is the wives who take main responsibility for looking after the children, often resulting in them having to restrict their own lives. A patriarchal ideology still sees women’s work to be looking after the children and doing housework. This argument backs up the evidence that Oakley has towards a non symmetrical family.
Duncombe and Marsden are two sociologists that interviewed 40 couples that have been married for 15years. They identified another area of work that is usually carried out by the women called ‘emotion work’ which is defined as being the management of ones own and other people emotional welfare. They see this as being work; therefore, women have to do a ‘triple shift’. This proves the theory that the family is not symmetrical as the women are still doing the work, with now more evidence of that, which is the ‘triple shift’ theory.
Another feminist that would back up Oakley’s theory of the non symmetrical family is Pahl (1993) who interviewed 102 couples with children, she saw together and alone. She focused on how each partner’s contribution to family income effects the decision making within the family. The results of her research showed that the husband controlled pooling was the most common, this means that the money is shared but the husband has the most control and the wife had a lower income. She also found that the situation where the wife had control was the least common. Therefore in over a quarter of couples there is some equality but in most cases had more power.
This proves the theory that industrialisation plays a major part in the segregation, as the husbands are the main breadwinners therefore giving them more power in financial issues, thus enforces women’s economic dependence on men. In Oakley’s view, even though the 20th century saw an increase in the increase in the number of married women working, being a housewife is still seen as a women’s primary role.
Like Pahl another sociologist Stephan Edgell (1980) conducted research on middle class and professional couples, he found that the husband dominated important decisions involving finances, jobs or moving homes which are all seen as important decisions to both the husband and the wife, but with the husband making all the final decisions. Also he found that wives dominated less important decisions such as interior decoration, children’s clothing and food shopping. His theory for this is that women usually earn less than their husbands; this makes them economically dependent on them, therefore having less say in decision making.
From the research conducted by Pahl and Edgell it would give evidence that the family is not symmetrical and is socially constructed as a result of industrialisation.
Although Ann Oakley’s evidence proves that the family is not becoming increasingly symmetrical and the roles are segregated there are some criticisms of her research. Firstly being that she only interviews the women in the marriage therefore making her claims bias as the husband would have no say in whether or not he does actually do more than the wife observes. Another is that she only interviews a small sample of people from Greater London. This could make her theory not applicable to the population of the whole of Britain and only to the families of Greater London. This is a criticism as in London there is greater pressure on husbands to work harder as properties and things are generally are more expensive. Where as if Oakley had taken a sample from a more remote area, her results may have been different, as there would be less pressure on the family. The only survey that can really prove any claim to represent everyone is the British Social Attitudes Survey which used a much larger sample of people (around 3000) and used careful sampling techniques.
There are also criticisms of Duncombe and Marsden which are that as well as Oakley only interviewed 40 couples which is a too small sample to apply to everyone in Britain. Aswell as this they interviewed the couple’s together, therefore putting pressure on the wives to say that their husbands did more than they actually did.
In light of the above evidence, women are still a long way away from real symmetry of roles in the family, as proved by Oakley, Pahl, Edgell and Duncombe and Marsden. All these sociologists have given some kind of evidence towards the fact that there has been a slight movement toward equality, but ultimately women still take the prime responsibility for the household tasks and childcare, and they still have less power in the relationship within the family and economically. All of this evidence towards a non symmetrical family has disproved Willmott and Young’s theory of symmetry in the family, although not completely.
