Conjugal Roles and Domestic Violence

Conjugal Roles and Domestic Violence

The distribution of domestic labour, emotion work, and decision-making within couples remains deeply unequal. Domestic violence is a pattern of power and control, not isolated incidents.

Conjugal Roles

Conjugal roles refer to the roles played by husband and wife (or partners) within the household.

Parsons (1955): Instrumental and Expressive Roles

• Instrumental role (husband): breadwinner, provider, link between family and wider society
• Expressive role (wife): homemaker, primary socialiser of children, emotional support
• These roles are based on biological differences — women are "naturally" suited to nurturing
• This division is functional for the family and society

Evaluation of Parsons

• Weakness: Young and Willmott (1973) argued these roles were becoming more equal
• Weakness: Oakley (1974) argued Parsons was simply legitimising patriarchy as "natural"
• Weakness: Based on 1950s middle-class American families — historically and culturally specific

Bott (1957): Segregated and Joint Conjugal Roles

Elizabeth Bott distinguished between:

Type	Description
Segregated conjugal roles	Husband and wife have clearly separated tasks; separate leisure activities and social networks
Joint conjugal roles	Partners share domestic tasks, leisure, and decision-making

• Bott found that segregated roles were more common in close-knit working-class communities where extended family and neighbours provided support networks

Young and Willmott (1973): The Symmetrical Family

• Studied families in London and argued that the family was becoming more symmetrical — partners were becoming more equal
• The symmetrical family is characterised by:
• Both partners in paid employment
• Husbands doing more housework and childcare
• Couples spending leisure time together
• The family is privatised (home-centred) and nuclear
• This was driven by changes in women's position, geographical mobility, new technology, and higher living standards
• They predicted this trend would continue (the "march of progress" view of family relationships)

Evaluation

• Weakness: Oakley (1974) — criticised Young and Willmott's evidence as inadequate
• Their question asked only whether husbands "helped" with housework at least once a week — even ironing a shirt once qualified
• "Helping" implies the work is the wife's responsibility
• Oakley's own research found that only 15% of husbands had a high level of participation in housework and only 25% in childcare
• Weakness: Even if husbands "help," women retain overall responsibility for managing the household (the "mental load")

Oakley (1974): The Sociology of Housework

Ann Oakley was the first sociologist to study housework as work:

• Interviewed 40 London housewives
• Found that women experienced housework as monotonous, fragmented, and isolating — comparable to factory work
• Women performed an average of 77 hours of housework per week
• Husbands' "help" was selective (playing with children rather than nappies; cooking occasionally as a "treat")
• Housework is unpaid, invisible, and devalued because it is done by women

The Triple Shift

Duncombe and Marsden (1995):

• Women perform a "triple shift":

1. Paid employment

2. Domestic labour (housework and childcare)

3. Emotion work — managing the emotional well-being of the family (listening, comforting, diffusing conflict, maintaining relationships)

• Even in apparently "equal" relationships, women carry the burden of emotion work
• Men are more likely to express satisfaction with the relationship because women are doing the invisible labour of maintaining it

The Dual Burden

Hochschild (1989) — The Second Shift:

• American sociologist who coined the term "second shift" to describe working women coming home to a full shift of domestic labour
• Studied 50 dual-career couples and found that women worked approximately 15 hours more per week than men on household tasks
• Even when men did more housework, they chose the more enjoyable or discretionary tasks (cooking, playing with children) while women did the routine, repetitive tasks (cleaning, laundry, daily cooking)

Recent Evidence

• ONS (2016): women do 60% more unpaid work than men on average
• Sullivan (2000): there has been a gradual trend towards greater equality in domestic labour since the 1960s, particularly among younger, better-educated couples — but full equality has not been achieved
• Kan (2001): the best predictor of a man's contribution to housework is his partner's earnings — the more she earns relative to him, the more he does
• Crompton (1997): genuine equality requires not just attitudinal change but structural change — affordable childcare, flexible working, and equal pay

Resources and Decision-Making

Pahl (1989) and Vogler (1994): studied how couples manage money:

• Identified two main systems:
• Allowance system: husband gives wife a fixed sum for housekeeping — he controls overall finances
• Pooling: partners have joint access to income — more egalitarian
• Even in "pooling" couples, men often had more personal spending money and greater say in major financial decisions
• Edgell (1980): found that in professional couples, husbands made the important decisions (finance, housing, careers), wives made less important ones (food, children's clothes), and only routine decisions were shared

Evaluation Summary

Thinker	Argument	Evaluation
Parsons	Roles are natural and functional	Legitimises patriarchy; historically specific
Young & Willmott	Family becoming symmetrical	Oakley: weak evidence; selective "help"
Oakley	Housework is devalued women's work	Dated (1974) but patterns persist
Duncombe & Marsden	Triple shift (paid + domestic + emotion)	Hard to measure emotion work empirically
Sullivan	Gradual trend towards equality	Progress real but slow and incomplete

Domestic Violence

Scale of the Problem

• The Crime Survey for England and Wales estimates 2.4 million adults experience domestic abuse annually
• 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime
• Two women per week are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales
• Domestic violence accounts for approximately 16% of all violent crime
• Under-reported: the British Crime Survey estimates only about 1 in 3 incidents are reported to police

Sociological Explanations

Radical Feminist Perspective:

• Dobash and Dobash (1979) — Violence Against Wives:
• Conducted in-depth interviews with women in refuges in Scotland
• Domestic violence is an inevitable product of patriarchy — it is used by men to maintain power and control over women
• Violence often triggered by the wife "challenging" male authority (questioning finances, going out without permission)
• Marriage legitimises male dominance — the institution itself creates the conditions for violence
• The state and criminal justice system have historically failed to protect women (police reluctance to intervene in "domestics")

• Millett (1970) and Brownmiller (1975): domestic violence is not about individual pathology but about systematic male domination — all men benefit from the climate of fear that violence creates

Evaluation of the Radical Feminist View:

• Strength: Explains why most victims are women and most perpetrators are men
• Strength: Has influenced real policy change (refuges, legal reforms, coercive control legislation)
• Weakness: Not all men are violent — ignores male victims (approximately 1 in 6 victims are men)
• Weakness: Does not explain violence in same-sex relationships or female-on-male violence
• Weakness: Elliot (1996): argues radical feminism treats all men as potential abusers, which is empirically unfounded

Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) — The Spirit Level:

• Domestic violence is linked to social inequality and stress
• Rates of violence are higher in more unequal societies and in lower-income households
• This is not because of individual inadequacy but because of structural stressors: poverty, unemployment, poor housing, lack of control over one's life
• Those at the bottom of the class structure experience the greatest frustration and lack of control, which can manifest as violence

Evaluation: helps explain why domestic violence rates are higher among lower-income groups, but risks pathologising the working class — domestic violence occurs across all classes.

Interactionist/Psychological Approaches:

• Focus on individual factors: learned behaviour (witnessing violence as a child), alcohol/drug use, personality disorders
• Evaluation: useful for understanding individual cases but fails to explain the pattern of male-on-female violence that sociologists emphasise

State and Policy Responses

• Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004): made common assault an arrestable offence in domestic violence cases
• Clare's Law (2014): allows individuals to ask police if their partner has a history of violence
• Coercive Control made a criminal offence (2015): controlling behaviour is now illegal, even without physical violence
• Refuge network: Women's Aid operates over 250 organisations providing safe accommodation

Exam Tip

For a 20-mark question on conjugal roles, do not just describe who does what — explain WHY inequality persists using resource theory (Pahl), cultural norms (Parsons), and structural inequality (Crompton). Link conjugal roles to the wider topic of gender inequality in society. For domestic violence, always use Dobash and Dobash as your core study and evaluate with alternative perspectives.