The Symmetrical Family

4 Key excerpts on "The Symmetrical Family"

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  eBook - ePub

  Women and the Family

  Two Decades of Change

  • Beth Hess, Marvin B Sussman(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  2 projected a movement from the "institutional" to the "companionship marriage," a change characterized by increased equality in marital relations, an emphasis on affection and personal happiness rather than the fulfillment of prescribed roles and duties, and enhanced attention to the personality development of family members rather than to common family objectives (p. 157). A similar perspective is evident in the concept of the "symmetrical" family" (Young and Wiilmott, 1973), defined as a shift toward less sex segregation in familial roles.

  Another model developed by Scanzoni (Scanzoni and Scanzoni, 1976; Scanzoni, 1980) focuses on the balance of power between the sexes, and distinguishes among four major types of relationships: (1) owner-property (absolute power of husband), (2) head-compliment, (3) senior-junior partner, and (4) equal partner (fully balanced). Despite his emphasis on power relations, Scanzoni clearly links the presumed trend toward egalitarian marriages to changes in other family roles, particularly increased sharing of the breadwinner role by husband and wife. Further elaborations of this model point to additional fundamental differences between "traditional" and "modern" marriages: in the goal orientations or "guiding philosophies" spouses pursue, as well as in their negotiation styles (Scanzoni, 1978; Scanzoni and Szinovacz, 1980). The marriage based on traditional prescribed sex-role preferences3 allows spouses to assume and enact familial roles without open discussion or overt negotiations. In contrast, the flexibility and role interchangeability typical for marriages based on norms of sharing, equality, and sex-role transcendence (Pyke, 1980; Rebecca et al., 1976) do not permit such "salient arrangements." The "modern" couple is, therefore, forced to negotiate openly responsibilities and duties. In addition, while women were traditionally expected to pursue family rather than personal interests, and men's authority and provider role entitled them to primary consideration, the guiding philosophy for the modern marriage is one of joint maximum profit, i.e., both partners' interests are equally important and decision-making assures the wellbeing of all family members.

  A somewhat different model is proposed by Dixon (1976). She holds that equality between the sexes requires full abolition of the sexual division of labor. Since traditional marriages are characterized by a rigid division of labor with the female assuming roles in the domestic realm (sexual relations, reproduction, socialization and hornemaking) and the male in the public sphere (politics, education, economic production), full equality can only be achieved if the structural linkages among roles within these two domains decline and roles are no longer ascribed by sex.

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  Families

  A Social Class Perspective

  • Shirley A. Hill(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  cult of true womanhood, women were endowed with a higher sense of purity and morality than men. The breadwinner-homemaker family model was more available to economically affluent European American families, but by the early 1950s, several factors—the rise of labor unions and the demand that men be paid family wage—heightened access to this family model. Parsons and Bales (1955) described modern families as “isolated” because they were nuclear in structure (composed of parents and children); performed a limited, specific set of functions; and were less reliant on or connected to the broader kinship structures. Parsons opined that kinship dominated social structures in “primitive” societies, whereas non-kinship structures were dominant in “advanced” societies.

  The notion of successful child socialization as a key function of the family, along with the reduced need for the economic labor of children as industrialization advanced, reshaped dominant attitudes and ideologies about children. Children in modern, middle-class families were increasingly seen as emotional rather than economic assets and as belonging more to mothers than to fathers. Endowed with this new sentimental value, they were the heart of the family, and being a good parent (or mother) required learning about child development and devoting considerable energy to socializing children. Whether or not childhood existed as a distinct stage of life in earlier societies, it was now clearly a prolonged period of life that included adolescence, a stage at which children began to negotiate their adult identities. Theories of child development proliferated during the early twentieth century, such as those proposed by psychologist Sigmund Freud and sociologist George Herbert Mead. Most saw children as moving through specific stages of development, propelled by both biological and social forces, and more emphasis was placed on their physical, social, and psychological needs. Legislators passed laws aimed at protecting and investing in children, such as mandatory education and policies ensuring their welfare, and many parents no longer saw rearing children as something that just came naturally.

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  An Introduction to Sociology

  Feminist Perspectives

  • Pamela Abbott, Melissa Tyler, Claire Wallace(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The main conclusion of the Willmott and Young studies was that the British family was becoming increasingly symmetrical – that is, the roles of husbands and wives were becoming more alike and would eventually become identical. Willmott and Young were careful to argue that this was the emergent family form – the way that the family was developing, not the way that it was already – but argued that in Britain there was a definite progression in this direction. Feminist approaches to the family Feminists have challenged the view that the family is becoming more egalitarian and symmetrical arguing, by contrast, that the family is a site of inequality in which women are subordinated. Feminists have argued that this is largely because of women’s position as wives and mothers, and because socialisation processes in the family, during which children internalise patriarchal ideas and transmit them to their own children, perpetuate male domination and female subordination. Feminists argue that women’s position in the family as wife/mother results in a position of subordination to men/fathers, at least in part because of economic dependency, but also because of widely shared ideologies of the family. While Marxist feminists stress that women’s exploitation in the family serves the interests of capitalism, radical feminists stress that it serves the interests of men, who benefit from the unpaid labour of women in a system of patriarchy. They are agreed, however, that the family oppresses women and that women are exploited and subordinated within it. Thus feminists have questioned not only sociological assumptions concerning the family, but common-sense ones as well. Sociologists Christine Delphy and Diana Leonard (1992) have argued that the family is an economic system in which men benefit from the work of women (and in many countries and cultures, the work of children too)

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  Gender and Development

  • Patrick Leman, Harriet Tenenbaum, Patrick Leman, Harriet Tenenbaum(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Given the percentage of women who work outside the home and the changing depiction of women in the workforce (Martinez, 2005), one might also expect there to be a transformation in societal views about the delegation of caretaking responsibilities. Even though some studies have found that many couples espouse egalitarian views (e.g. Nock, 2001), there is not strong evidence in social reasoning of children and adolescents that there is equality in caretaking tasks. For this reason, more research should continue to explore household functioning and the factors that influence the work and family balance, particularly research involving households in which the couples espouse a shared division of labour or a comparison of traditional and non-traditional families (e.g. male homemakers). Such studies would inform the understanding of the developmental processes of family dynamics and how gender norms influence the work and family balance.

  Implications and future research

  Understanding how children and adolescents evaluate family roles provides an important window into the factors that help contribute to the goal of providing environments for youth that reflect equality, equity and fairness. Coltrane and Shih (2010) so clearly articulated the illogical nature of the gender inequity in the home, and the continued strength of social conventions, ‘If the work is not inherently gendered, why do many people continue to think that most household labor should be performed by women?’ (p. 403). The above research about children's and adolescents' understanding of and social cognition about the gendered roles of occupations and parental roles in the home shows children should have opportunities to evaluate fairness in the household domain and to develop their career interests without the pressures of gender conformity. Societal pressures to conform to gender ideologies, and gender expectations for child-rearing bear on the development of children's knowledge, understanding and expectations about gender roles (Fulcher, 2011).

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