Anne Oakley’s study on conjugal roles in 1974 is still a widely used study today. She collected information on 40 married women aged between 20 and 30, who were British or Irish living in the London area and all of whom had one or more children under the age of 5. Half of her samples were working class and the other half were middle class. Oakley found that there was a greater equality in terms of the allocation of domestic tasks between spouses in the middle class than the working classes. In both classes, few men had high levels of participation in housework and childcare. Overall in 15% of marriages, men had higher levels of participation in housework.
However it could be argued that Oakley’s data is unrepresentative as there is only a very small sample considering how many women there are that are between the ages of 20 and 30 with one or more children under the age of 5, and even greater amount of women outside the London area. Also the study was undertaken over 30 years ago. This is why a generalisation cannot be made.
Oakley heavily criticised the two functionalists Wilmott and Young on their views on the symmetrical family. She argued deeply that their claim on increasing symmetry within the marriage is based on ‘inadequate methodology’. She argued that the question that she posed; do you/does your husband help at least once a week with any household jobs, like washing up, making beds, helping with the children, ironing, cooking or cleaning?’ is too broad as the answer could be yes and no that the husband may do things every now and then but the majority could go to the women. Also that the husband may feel that he does help out whereas the wife may feel as if does not. The answer can also vary from person to person.
Willmott and Young (1973) believe that conjugal roles are increasingly becoming joint, meaning that there is relatively little domestic division by labour in the roles within the relationship. They felt that symmetrical families were typical of the middle class.
Their theory was tested by Stephen Edgell in 1980. He did this by examining conjugal roles with a sample of 38 middle classed couples. He found very little evidence supporting Willmott and Young’s view. None of the couples in his sample were classified as having joint conjugal roles in relation to housework. But again the sample is very small so it cannot be made into a generalisation even though making a generalisation wasn’t the point of this study.
An important aspect to consider when studying the roles within the family is that of the feminist. Most of the studies undertaken on conjugal roles occurred around the rise of feminism in the 1960’s as they hold a fairly negative view to the family, that it is patriarchal and male- dominated, and that women have a service role forced on them as ‘unpaid servants’ that women are paid workers and unpaid housewives. This is a view shared mainly by the radical feminists.
A fairly recent feminist study was done by Frances Elston in 1980; it was called “Half of Future Doctors”. Elston studied the lives of male and female, middle classed doctors who were married to each other.
Elston discovered that only 1% of male doctors did chores such as shopping, cleaning and cooking. 50% of female doctors performed chores such as cleaning, which suggests that many of the couples were able to employ cleaners to do this work. Also
80% of female doctors carried out chores such as shopping and cooking.
These findings are important because it shows that males and females have different ideological expectations when it comes to domestic labour as it shows that it is the females that do majority of it even in the situation where the female works full time in a job similar to that of the male.
I want to see if in my own study I can back up any of these studies as their results are very much varied. I would especially like to look at who answers the childcare portion of my survey and see if it is similar to the results of Feri and Smith’s as this is the most recent study shown here so it would be interesting to see if my results are in correlation to theirs. I would also like to look at the correlation between age and gender, this way I can see if household tasks that are being allocated due to gender are on the rise or if youth have equalled out the bias or simply see if it is still the same as it was many years ago.
Methodology
I think that the best way to obtain information I would need for this study would be to form a questionnaire, that can be distributed easily to couples no matter their age gender or class and whether they have children or not.
I have chosen a questionnaire because I think that quantitative data is better suited to the kind of study I wish to perform, this way it is also easier to bring back up together the results, as the questionnaire will be formed from mainly closed ended questions. By using closed ended questions there is no need to try and interpret any of the respondents answers, which makes the study more valid.
Due to the short amount of time to conduct this study it is not very practical to do postal questionnaires as even though there is a high geographical range and they are very efficient to reproduce and distribute in large numbers, there is not enough time to wait for the responses, the response rate for postal questionnaires is as low as a 20%, and this can effect the reliability of the sample as it may not be random, because there may be a large amount of time difference between the first response and the last, in which case events and information might have been experienced, that the first responses did/ would not know about. Another reason is that there is no guarantee that the questionnaire would be filled out correctly or by the participants chosen as the participant may discuss the answers with others or simple give the questionnaire to someone else to fill out.
This is why I have chosen a sample number of 25, as I feel that this would be more manageable to collect in the time period that I have, also I think that by using this amount, there is sufficient data for me to have an idea of the way in which domestic tasks are allocated. I will still ask questions on childcare, because I think that it can be classed as a domestic task and I do already have an interest in the subject and feel that there is definitely an allocation due to gender.
There is no risk of ethical issues as for example there is no deception involved, I have clearly stated what I want to do with the answers once received, they do not have to fill out the questionnaire if they do not feel they want to or are uncomfortable with any of the questions and I have not asked for the participants names. And by using one open ended question there is room to explore the study even further.
To make sure that the questionnaires are filled out correctly, I will state on them that they need to be filled out individually which would mean that the results are more reliable and more personal to the participant and so that they feel that they can fill out the questionnaire without trying to spare the partners feelings or causing arguments.
Also it will be stated on the questionnaire that all the answers are confidential so that there is no need to write their names on it so they can be as honest as they can. Also I will be using the snowball method whereby the only people who do fill out the questionnaires do so because they want to. Nobody has to fill it out if they do not want to, which means that again the results will be more reliable as the participants will spend more time on the questionnaire and think about their answers more truthfully because they want to fill out the questionnaire.
I am expecting that a few of the answers given by the participants may be anomalies as there may be some confusion with questions or a participants interpretation of the questions may be different to that of my interpretation of the questions. I have made the questionnaire very simple but there is still a risk of anomalies. I have made the questions unambiguous and there are no leading questions but there might still be the factor that the participant might rush in the answering as they might have little time to fill it out.
Pilot Study
For my pilot study I gave out 5 of the questionnaires to be filled out by random participants. It was extremely successful meaning that there were very few things that needed changing on the questionnaire.
The main item on the questionnaire that I felt really needed changing was the sentence above the table where it stated ‘Please tick as to whom does which household job;’ there was some slight confusion as a few participants marked more than one box for some of the household tasks. I have now changed it so that it states in the sentence also that only one box is required to be ticked for each household job.
I am now happy that from the feedback from my pilot study that my questionnaire is simple and easy to understand making it better for the participants to understand and therefore making my responses and data to be more valid.
