The Domestic Division of Labour + Childhood PDF

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Sociological summaries of the domestic division of labour which is heavily gender focused, as well as childhood through a theoretical lens....

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The Domestic Division of Labour

Domestic Division of labour: The division of tasks, roles, and duties within the household. Parsons : Instrumental and Expressive Roles Parsons' conceptualization of expressive and task roles was limited by stereotypical ideas about gender, heterosexual relationships, and unrealistic expectations for family organization and structure, however, freed of these ideological constraints, these concepts have value and are usefully applied to understanding social groups today. Parson argues that this division of labour is based on biological differences, with women naturally more suited to the nurturing role. Instrumental Role: The father is task oriented as he accomplishes a specific task (earning money) as well as displaying characteristics of an authority figure and head of the household which is required for the family unit to function. Expressive Role: The mother is responsible for the primary socialization of the children, raising the children, domestic task within the home and provides morale (the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time.) and cohesion for the group through emotional support and social instruction.

Segregated Conjugal Roles: When the husband and wife have a different tasks and a considerable number of separate interests and activities. Joint Conjugal Roles: When the husband and wife carry out many activities together and do housework together as well as sharing interests. Symmetrical family: The husband and the wife’s roles have become more equal/ similar. Why has this happened?

 Women are respected more  Improved rights for women  Women go to work and work full time  Men help with the house work

The March Progress View The 'March of Progress' is the assumption that there has been a move from segregated to integrated conjugal roles. The sociologists, Young and Willmott take a march of progress stance towards gender equality. The early industrial family was one largely based on segregated conjugal roles, where men and women had clearly defined tasks. For instance, women were likely to undertake the majority of domestic tasks and raise children whereas the man would go out to work. According to Young and Willmott, these roles changed as industrialisation advanced as we entered the 20th century. They believed that there was increasing gender equality in society (led partly with more women working) and described the ‘modern’ monogamous family as symmetrical, where roles are egalitarian and democratic.

Childhood

Social Construct: Something created by society, constructed from social meanings. Sociologists see childhood as socially constructed, arguing what people mean by childhood/ the position children occupy in society is not fixed but differs between different times/places/cultures. Cross-Cultural: Dealing with or offering comparison between two or more different cultures or cultural areas. The emergence of a child-centred society in twentieth century Britain was the result of a number of related developments.

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Improved living standards in terms of wages, housing, sanitation, nutrition, hygiene and improvements in maternal health care led to a major decline in the infant mortality rate. People no longer needed to have lots of children in order to ensure that a few survived.

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As society became more affluent, so children were needed less as economic assets and raising children became more expensive. Parents therefore chose to have fewer children. The increased availability and efficiency of contraception allowed people to choose to have fewer children.

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Cultural expectations about childhood changed as the media defined childhood and adolescence as separate categories from adulthood. Parents came to see childhood as a special time in terms of love, socialisation and protection.

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The State became more involved in the supervision, socialisation and protection of children. The State supervises the socialisation of children through compulsory education which lasts 11 years. The role of social services and social workers is to police those families in which children are

thought to be at risk. The government also takes some economic responsibility by paying child benefit to parents.

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The Children Act (2004) has produced the influential policy Every Child Matters which focuses on the well-being of children and young people from birth to age 19. These stresses ‘better outcomes’ for children, such as ‘being healthy, staying safe’, and ‘achieving economic well-being’ at the centre of all government policies. Increasingly, children have come to be seen by the State as individuals with rights.

Neil Postman In his book The Disappearance of Childhood, Postman suggests that the dividing line between childhood and adulthood is beginning to disappear and sees childhood as under threat because television exposes them too soon to the adult world. Palmer agrees and claims that parents are too happy to use television, electronic games and junk food to keep children quiet and that parents are either too busy or too distracted by consumerism to give children a traditional childhood and family life. Postman argues that childhood emerged along with mass literacy. This was because the printed word created a division between those that could read (adults) and those that couldn’t (children). This division emerged because it takes several years to master reading and writing skills. Childhood in Postmodernity Postmodernists argue that we no longer live in the modern world with predictable orderly structures, such as the nuclear family. Instead society has entered a new, chaotic postmodern stage. In postmodern society, family structures are incredibly varied and individuals have much more freedom of choice in aspects of their lives Postmodern society has two key characteristics

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Diversity and fragmentation: Society is increasingly fragmented, with a broad diversity of subcultures rather than one shared culture. People create their identity from a wide range of choices, such as youth subcultures, sexual preferences and social movements such as environmentalism.

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Rapid social change: New technology such as the internet, email and electronic communication have transformed our lives by dissolving barriers of time and space, transforming patterns of work and leisure and accelerated pace of change making life less predictable.

As a result of these social changes, family life has become very diverse and there is no longer one dominant family type (such as the nuclear family Chris Jenks Jenks says that childhood is changing and he acknowledges, there is a key distinction to be made between such everyday theorising of the child and similar social work we all also do around class, race or gender.

Every adult has at one time been a child and every child (tragic events avoided) has the potential to be an adult. “Whether we regard children as pure, bestial, innocent, corrupt, charged with potential, tabula rasa, or even as we view our adult selves; whether they think and reason as we do, are immersed in a receding tide of inadequacy, or are possessors of a clarity of vision which we have through experience lost; whether their forms of language, games and conventions are alternative to our own, imitations or crude precursors of our own now outgrown, or simply transitory impenetrable trivia which are amusing to witness and recollect; whether they are constrained and we have achieved freedom, or we have assumed constraint and they are truly free – all these considerations, and more, continue to exercise our theorising about the child in social life” March of Progress View: March of progress sociologists say that childhood has changed dramatically because children have become more valued, protected and educated. Due to the introduction of various laws, children have become more protected, cared for and treated differently to adults. However, the conflict view argues that childhood has not improved because massive inequalities still exist e.g. children suffer under the control and oppression of adults which can often take extreme forms of physical, sexual or emotional abuse. The March of progress view argues that society has finally recognised that childhood is a distinct phase in one’s life where children should be treated separately in order to maintain their innocence. Toxic Childhood Sue Palmer’s (2006) book Toxic Childhood argued that children were being harmed by a combination of technological and social changes such as increasingly screen based lifestyles, a hyper-competitive education system, the decline of outdoor play and the commercialisation of childhood. Electronic technologies are great for us but are not good for our children. Because of them, the world is changing too fast. People are finding it harder and harder to keep up, and are becoming confused about their priorities. Parents, instead of spending time reading to their children at night or talking to them, plonk them in front of the television and treat it as an electronic babysitter. They buy their children electronic games and junk food to keep them quiet, and spend less and less time with them. Thus they deprive them of what they need most - a good old-fashioned upbringing where parents are in charge, providing a safe, calm and nurturing environment, where they can develop at their own pace and learn important moral and cultural values that are the foundation of a stable society....