If a couple were to discuss honestly how a modern ‘pure relationship’ is likely to pan out then the conversation might go something like this….
Covers concepts such as reflexivity, the pure relationship and confluent love.
Category: Families and Households
Sociological Perspectives on Single Person Households
people increasingly choose to live alone because of increased wealth, urbanisation, improved communications and living longer
Why are increasing numbers of people all over the world living alone?
People increasingly choose to live alone because of:
- Increasing wealth: people in wealthier countries are more likely to choose to live alone.
- Improved communications: makes it easier for solo-livers to keep in contact with friends and family while living alone.
- Mass urbanisation: higher density populations = easier to connect with other people.
- Increased longevity: following a relationship ending or one partner dying, there is less desire to pair-up again!
According to a recent book by Eric Klinenberg (2013) Explaining the Rise of Solo Living (1), this is a global phenomenon and mainly reflects the increasing degree of individual choice that comes with increasing wealth.
Global trends in single person households
The percentage of one person households has increased in many countries since the 1960s and since the year 2000, although there is a lot of variation by country.
In America the number of single person households has doubled since. the1960s, with 28% of households having only one person in them in 2018.
The countries with the highest levels of people living on their own are in Northern Europe. In Germany, for example, more than 40% of households. are single person households. (2)
Single Person Households in the UK
In 2022, 30% of households in the UK were single person households, this is a very slight increase since 2012.
Living alone: younger men and older women
There has been a change in the proportion of men and women living alone by age over the last decade. In 2022 the relative percentages are as follows:
| Age | Men | Women |
| 16-24 | 2.6% | 1.8% |
| 25-44 | 23.6% | 20.7% |
| 45-64 | 34.6% | 26.6% |
| 65-74 | 19% | 23.5% |
| 75+ | 20.3% | 37.5% |
A Summary of Going Solo by Klinenberg
Klinenberg argues that the rise of solo living is an extremely important social trend which presents a fundamental challenge to the centrality of the family to modern society. In the USA, the average adult will now spend more of their life unmarried than married, and single person households are one of the most common types of household. We have entered a period in social history where, for the first time, single people make up a significant proportion of the population.
Eric Klinenberg spent seven years interviewing 300 single Americans who lived alone, and the general picture he got was that these people were exactly where they wanted to be – living on their own was not a transitory phase, it was a genuine life choice. On the whole, living alone is seen as a mark of social distinction, living as part of a couple is for losers.
While single by choice is very much on the up among younger people who have never settled down into a long term cohabiting relationships and have no intention of doing so, it is also the norm among older people who have come out of relationships.
Where older people living alone are concerned, and these are mostly women, they are not all chasing the dwindling population of men in their age group (given the higher life expectancy for women). Most of them are in fact wary of getting involved in relationships because doing so will probably mean becoming someone’s carer (again), and similarly they are skeptical about moving back in with their children (and possibly their grandchildren too) because of fear that they will become an unpaid domestic and child-sitting slave.
NB, as a counter to the above, not all singles are happy about it, however. One such group consists of mainly men on low wages who are unmarriageable and live in ‘single room occupancy facilities’ often suffering from various addictions and who practice ‘defensive individualism’ in order to cope with their bleak situation.
Why are more people living alone?
So how do we account for this increasing in single person households?
Klinenberg suggests four reasons…
- The increased wealth generated by economic growth and the social security provided by the modern welfare state – the basic thesis is that the rise of single living is basically just a reflection of increasing wealth. When we can afford to live alone, more of us choose to do so. We especially see this where Scandinavia is concerned, and nearly half of the adult population live alone.
- The communications revolution – For those who want to live alone, the internet allows us to stay connected. An important part of his thesis is that just because we are increasingly living alone, this doesn’t mean that we are becoming a ‘society of loners’.
- Mass urbanization – Klinenberg suggests that Subcultures thrive in cities, which tend to attract nonconformists who are able to find others like themselves in the dense variety of urban life. In short, it’s easier to connect with other singles where people live closer together.
- Increased longevity – because people are living longer than ever and because women often outlive their spouses by decades rather than years — aging alone has become an increasingly common experience.
Discussion questions
In the video below, Wayne discusses his motivations for ‘going solo’ with his friend Archie, and together they explore some of the reasons for the increase in single person households.
- To what extent do you think Kleinberg’s findings apply to the increase in Solo Living in the UK?
- What other ‘deeper’ Sociological reasons might explain the increase in Solo Living?
- Do you agree that the rise of Solo Living challenges the centrality of the family in modern society?
Historical data (on single person households)
Most people who live alone are 65+ and increasing numbers of those aged 45-60 are living alone. However, the numbers of younger people living alone are declining (so Wayne in the video above is actually wrong when he says solo living is on the increase among younger people!)
Signposting and Related Posts
This material is mainly relevant to the families and households module, usually taught in the first year of A-level sociology.
Explaining the reasons for the increase in family diversity (explores further reasons for the increase in single person households and other ‘family’ types).
(1) Klinenberg’s Book on Amazon.
(2) Our World in Data: People Living Alone.
(3) ONS (2021, see also 2022) Families and Households in the UK.
The Consequences of an Ageing Population
healthy life expectancy isn’t keeping pace, and the sheer cost of looking after the elderly in the context of family-individualism make the ageing population a problem!
Populations across Europe are getting older which can create social problems related to higher levels of poor health among older people and a greater financial and caring ‘burden’ on younger generations.
But careful social planning can help to overcome these challenges.
What are the consequences of an ageing population?
This is a summary of a recent Radio 4 Analysis podcast – Three Score Years and Twenty on Ageing Britain. It’s of clear relevance to the demography topic within the 7191 families and households module….
Here are some of the main points.
In 1850,half the population in England were dead before they reached 46. Now half the population in England are alive at 85; and 8 million people currently alive in the UK will make it to 100 years or more. And if we extrapolate that to Europe, we can say 127 million Europeans are going to live to 100.
Hans Rosling points out that: We reached the turning point five years ago when the number of children stopped growing in the world. We have 2 billion children. They will not increase. The increase of the world population from now on will be a fill up of adults.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt: The two biggest issues that we face as an ageing society are the sustainability of the NHS and the sustainability of the pension system; and within the NHS, I include the social care system as part of that.
The basic problem we have in Northern European countries is the generational tension between individualism and communal responsibility – Across the generations within a typical family we have become more individualistic and less collective/ communal:
People in their 80s (who grew up in the 1960s) are generally very individualistic – they have retired into property wealth and are unwilling to relinquish the independence this gives them. They have also socialised their children into being more independent: most people today in their 50s (the children of those who are in their 80s) have bought into this – The family norm is one of the typical 50 year old living an independent life with family, miles away from their own parents.
Grandparents today of course help out with childcare occasionally and pay regular visits, but they are generally not taking a day to day role in childcare, and finances are kept separate. This arrangement is mutual – People in their 80s don’t want to be burdens on their children, they want them to have the freedom to live their own lives – to be able to work and raise their children without having to care for them in their old age. (So I suppose you might call the 2000s the era of the individualised family).
(This is very different to what it used to be like in the UK, and what it is still like in many other parts of the world where grandparents live close by and are an integral part of family life, taking an active role in raising their grandchildren on a day to day basis. Various interviewees from less developed countries testify to this, and to the advantages of it.)
Within this context of increasing ‘familial-individualism‘ a number of problems of the ageing population are discussed:
Increased family individualism
One of the main problems which this increasing ‘familial-individualism’ creates for people in their 80s is one of increasing isolation and loneliness as their friends and neighbours move away or die.
One proposed solution is for older people to be prepared to move into communal supported housing where there are shared leisure facilities, like many people do in Florida. However, people are quite set in their ways in the UK and so this is unlikely. A second solution, which some immigrants are choosing is to return to thier country of origin where there are more collectivist values, trading in a relatively wealthy life in the UK for less money and more community abroad.
Healthy Life Expectancy
A second problem is that healthy life expectancy is not keeping pace with life-expectancy, and there are increasing numbers of people in their 80s who spend several years with chronic physical conditions such as arthritis, and also dementia – which require intensive social care.
As with the first point above, this is more of a social problem when children do not see it as their duty to care for their elderly parents – It is extremely expensive to provide round the clock care for chronic conditions for several years, and this puts a strain on the NHS. Basically, the welfare state cannot cope with both pensions and chronic care.
One potential solution to the above is mentioned by Sally Greengross: the Germans in some cases now export older people to Eastern European countries because they can’t afford – or they say they can’t – to provide all the services they need in Germany itself. Could this be the future of chronic elderly care in the UK – Exporting dementia patients to poorer countries?
However, the idea of care-homes themselves are not dismissed when it comes to end of life care – the consensus seems to be that the quality of care in UK elderly care homes is generally very good, and better than your typically family could provide (despite all the not so useful scare programmes in the media).
No money left for the young
A third problem is for those in their 50s – with their parents still alive and ‘sucking money out of the welfare state’ there is less left for everything else – and this has been passed down to the youngest generation.
As a result people in their 50s now face the prospect of their own children living at home for much longer and having to help them with tuition fees and mortgage financing, meaning that their own plans for retirement in their late-50s/ early 60s are looking less likely – In other words, the next two generations are bearing a disproportionate cost of the current ageing population.
Worryingly, there is relatively little being done about this in government circles – Yes, the state pension age has been raised, and measures have been taken to get people to bolster their own private pensions, but this might be too little to late, and it looks like little else is likely to be done – The issue of the ageing population and the cost of welfare for the elderly is not a vote-winner after all.
The programme concludes by pointing out that pensions and care homes are only part of the debate. What will also be needed to tackle the problems of the ageing population is a more age-integrated society, a possible renegotiation at the level of the family so that grandparents are more integrated on a day to day basis in family life (trading of child care for a level of elderly care) and also social level changes – to make work places and public places more accessible for the elderly who might be less physically able than those younger than them.
Here’s the full transcript of the show –analysis-ageing
Further Reading
The Future of an Ageing Population (Government Report)
Underfunded and Overstretched – The Crisis in Care for the Elderly – 2016 Guardian article
Related Posts
The question of why we have an ageing population is explained by the combination of the long term decrease in both the birth rates and death rates dealt with in these two posts: Explaining changes to the birth rate, and Explaining the long term decline of the death rate.
A related topic in the Global Development module is the question of whether ‘overpopulation’ is a problem – an informed view on this topic is that of Hans Rosling’s who argues that ‘overpopulation’ isn’t really a problem at all because of the rapid global decline in birth rates.
This mind map on The consequences of an ageing population offers you an easier summary or the topic compared to this post.
Other Summaries of Thinking Allowed Podcasts
Thinking Allowed really is an excellent resource for A level Sociology – here are two other summaries of recent Thinking Allowed Podcasts…
Social Policy and The Family
How do social policies affect family life?
This post defines social policy and then examines the 1969 Divorce Act, Maternity and Paternity Acts, the Civil Partnership Act and Child Benefit policies, looking at how these policies have impacted different aspects of family life such as marriage, divorce, family structure, as well as the differential impact on men, women and children within the family.
What is social policy?
Social policy refers to the plans and actions of state agencies such as health and social services, the welfare benefits system and schools and other bodies.
Policies are usually based on laws introduced by governments that provide the framework within which these agencies will operate. For example, laws lay down who is entitled to each specific welfare benefit.
Most social policies affect families in some way or other. Some are aimed directly at families, such as laws governing marriage and divorce, abortion or contraception, child protection, adoption and so on.
Policies are not necessarily aimed specifically at families but will have an effect in families. Such policies would include those on childcare, education, housing, and crime. Furthermore, many policies that impact upon families are those that make changes to the legislation on taxation and benefits, such as child tax credits.
Recently, the Department for Education and Skills has been given a new name and expanded role. The creation of the Department for Children, Schools and Families suggest that the current government believe that to make a better society for the children of today, family life and education should not be treated as two separate areas of life.
There are many social policies which have affected family life over the years, so the summary below is necessarily selective!
Social Policy and the Family: A Summary
Marriage and Divorce Policies
The most well-known act is probably the 1969 Divorce Act which made getting a divorce MUCH easier. Since then, the main policies have been focused on equalising marriage for same-sex couples and most recently raising the legal age of marriage from 16 to 18.
The 1969 Divorce Act
Before 1969, one partner had to prove that the other was ‘at fault’ to be granted a divorce, however, following the Divorce Reform Act of 1969, a marriage could be ended if it had irretrievably broken down, and neither partner no longer had to prove “fault”. However, if only one partner wanted a divorce, they still had to wait 5 years from the date of marriage to get one. In 1984 this was changed so that a divorce could be granted within one year of marriage.
The Civil partnerships Act 2004
The Civil Partnership Act 2004 gave same-sex couples the rights and responsibilities like those in a civil marriage. The Act was introduced by the New Labour government in power at the time. Civil partners are entitled to the same property rights, the same exemptions on inheritance tax, social security, and pension benefits as married couples. They also have the same ability to get parental responsibility for a partner’s children as well as reasonable maintenance, tenancy rights, insurance, and next-of-kin rights in hospital and with doctors. There is a process like divorce for dissolving a civil partnership.
There were 60 938 Same-Sex Civil Partnerships formed between 2004 and 2013, with annual numbers being around 6500 a year following an initial spike in the first couple years. From 2013 annual numbers of same-sex civil partnerships dropped to fewer than 1000 a year reflecting the fact that from 2013 same-sex couples were allowed to get married on the same basis as opposite-sex couples.
Since 2019 opposite-sex couples can also enter civil-partnerships and in 2021 6000 couples did so, but these numbers may be lower because of Covid-19 restrictions on social gatherings.
The Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013
This act allows same-sex couples to enter a marriage in England and Wales on the same basis as opposite-sex couples, and to convert Civil Partnerships to Marriages. Statistics from the ONS suggest that same-sex couples prefer marriage over civil partnerships as there were approximately 6000 same-sex marriages in 2019, which reflects the drop off in the number of civil partnerships since marriage has been an option.
The Marriage and Civil Partnership Minimum Age Act 2022
In 2022 the minimum age of marriage in England and Wales was raised to 18. Previously it had been possible for 16 and 17 year olds to get married with parental consent. Since 2022 it is illegal to force children, including 16 and 17 year olds to marry and to do so could incur a jail sentence of up to seven years in prison. The act also covers more ‘informal’ non-legally binding ceremonies.
Maternity and Paternity Policies
In 2023 new mothers in the UK are entitled to 52 weeks statutory maternity leave, 39 weeks of which is paid, but at different rates.
- The first 6 weeks of maternity leave are paid at 90% of your salary.
- The next 33 weeks you are paid £172.48 per week or 90% of weekly average earnings (whichever is lower)
- Any remaining leave is unpaid up to a maximum of 52 weeks.
Fathers are only entitled to up to two weeks of paternity leave, paid at the same rate as the final 33 weeks of maternity leave pay for mothers (£172.48 per week or 90% of weekly average earnings, whichever is lower.
Since 2015 parents can apply for up to 50 weeks of Shared Parental Leave, up to 37 weeks of which are paid. For this to work the woman must swap her maternity leave for shared leave, this isn’t extra leave for the father.
There is quite a long history of changes to maternity and paternity policy….
The Employment Protection Act of 1975
Social responsibility for women’s health during childbearing was first recognised through the 1911 National Insurance Act. It included a universal maternal health benefit and a one off maternity grant of 30 shillings for insured women (around £119 in today’s money)
However, many women were routinely sacked for becoming pregnant until the late 1970s and the UK only introduced its first maternity leave legislation through the Employment Protection Act 1975. However, for the first 18 years (until 1993!) only about half of working women were eligible for it because of long qualifying periods of employment. The act was amended in 1993 so that all pregnant women got a minimum of 14 weeks statutory maternity leave regardless of prior employment
Paternity polices
In 2003, male employees received paid statutory paternity leave for the first time, an entitlement that was extended in January 2010.
Since 2010 (following what is often called the ‘Paternity Act’) – This leave is divided into two 26-week periods. After the first 26 weeks, the father of the child (or the mother’s partner) has the right to take up to 26 weeks’ leave if their partner returns to work, in effect taking the place of the mother at home. It is unlawful to dismiss (or single out for redundancy) a pregnant employee for reasons connected with her pregnancy.
Shared Parental Leave
From 2015, parents will be given the right to share the care of their child in the first year after birth. Women in employment will retain their right to 52 weeks of maternity leave. Only mothers will be allowed to take leave in the first two weeks’ leave after birth. But after that parents can divide up the rest of the maternity leave.
Child Benefit Policies
Child benefit is payable for every child parents have, although if you’re a parent who earns more than £60 000 in 2023 you have to pay back all of it in the form of extra taxes.
Child Benefit has been around for almost 50 years!
The Child Benefit Acts (1975)
The Child Benefit Bill introduced for the first time a universal payment, paid for each child. The rate payable was £1/week for the first and £1.50 for each subsequent child. An additional 50p was payable to lone-parent families.
Child Benefits increased in line with inflation, until 1998, when the new Labour government increased the first child rate by more than 20% and abolished the Lone Parent rate. Rates increased again in line with inflation until 2010, since which time they have been frozen.
Effective from 7 January 2013, Child Benefit became means tested – those earning more than £50,000 per year would have part of their benefit withdrawn, and if earning over £60,000, would receive nothing at all.
Child Benefit in 2023
In 2023 everyone with children receives child benefit payments in the following amounts:
- £24 a week for the first child
- £15.90 a week for each subsequent child.
- There is no limit to the number of children parents will receive child benefit for.
These payments are awarded for children up to the age 16 and up to age of 20 if they stay on in further or higher education.
They are payable to everyone whether working or in receipt of Universal Credit and the payments are in addition to the child payment part of universal credit.
However, for those earning £50 000 or more a year, they pay additional taxes: a ‘child tax credit charge’ which recoups some of the money received in child benefit, and for those earning £60K a year, they pay so much this cancels out the entire amount they will receive in child benefit.
Universal Credit Child Benefits
Universal Credit was introduced in 2013 to replace a wide range of other individual benefits including income support, housing benefit, working tax credit and child tax credit.
The total amount of universal credit for single people is just under £15 000 a year and for a single person or couple with children the cap is £22 000 a year (if they have two children living with them).
The general idea behind universal credit is to encourage people into work by making sure they are not earning less when working in part-time or low-paid jobs compared to claiming benefits. Prior to Universal Credit the benefits system had perverse incentives meaning you could earn less working 16 hours a week than on benefits because when you started working more than 16 hours per week JobSeeker’s Allowance would stop and you would lose your housing benefit. Under Universal Credit this doesn’t happen because if your earnings are below £15000 (if you’re a single person), they are ‘topped up’, thus encouraging more people into work (3)
In 2023, people with children who are eligible for Universal Credit receive £315 for their first child and then £270 for their second child, payable until those children turn 18 (assuming they stay in education) and then no further payments for any further children they have after the first two (unless they already had three or more children before 2017 and were already claiming the previous child tax credit and transferred onto Universal Credit).
The money paid by the government for children (the ‘child tax credit’ part of universal credit, if you like) is part of that overall cap. If someone’s overall Universal Credit amount is greater than £22 000 when they start receiving more money because of having two children, universal credit would automatically adjust downwards to the upper cap.
The Adoption Act 2005
In 2005, under New Labour, the law on adoption changed, giving unmarried couples, including gay couples, the right to adopt on the same basis as married couples.
Signposting and Related Posts
This topic is part of the families and households module, normally taught in the first year of A-level sociology.
After reading this post you should read this one: Sociological Perspectives on Social Policy and The Family
You might also like this brief video on… How do Social Policies Affect Family Life?
Sources
ONS (December 2022) Civil Partnerships in England and Wales 2021
ONS (May 2022) Marriages in England and Wales 2019
(3) This is a simplified version, things are a little more complex, to see more: Gov.UK (Accessed May 2023) Universal Credit Allowances
Gov.UK (Accessed May 2023) Universal Tax Credit and Children
A Radical Feminist Perspective on the Family
the norm of the traditional, privatised nuclear family can disadvantage women who would be more free in women only households.
Radical feminists see society as patriarchal: all social institutions are systematically structured to run in the interests of men and to maintain male power over women.
The traditional nuclear family is seen as one of the most important institutions which subordinates women to male power by putting women into the roles of housewives and mothers, through which they become financially dependent on men.
Physical violence against women is one of the main ways male domination over women is maintained and the ideology of the the privatised nuclear family makes it easier for men to commit domestic violence. If the family is private in makes it easier for domestic violence to continue on, hidden away from public view.
Precisely because the family is supposed to be private, victims of domestic violence are reluctant to report crimes against them and friends, neighbours and state agencies reluctant to investigate.
For radical feminists men and women have different interests and part of the radical feminist strategy is consciousness raising to help women realise this. Part of this involves challenging women’s ideas that the nuclear family set up is good, and getting them to question whether they need to have children or families at all.
Some radical feminists have suggested that in order to combat patriarchy women need to live in radically alternative family structures: such as women only households or even adopting lesbian relationships.
Germaine Greer – The Whole Woman and The Family
Germaine Greer (2000) argues that the family continues to disadvantage women. She focuses on looking at the role of women as wives, mothers and daughters.
Women as Wives
Greer argues that there is a strong ideology suggesting that being a wife is the most important female role. The wives of presidents and prime ministers get considerable publicity, but often have to be subservient to their husbands. Such a role demands that the woman…
‘Must not only be seen to be at her husband’s side on all formal occasions, she must also be seen to adore him and never to appear less than dazzled by everything he may say or do. Her eyes should be fixed on him but he should do his best never to be caught looking at her’.
This inequality is mirrored in most marriages. Greer argues that marriage reinforces patriarchal relations from the outset. What she refers to as the ‘ghastly figure of the bride’ expresses traditional conceptions of femininity and once the honeymoon period is over marriage settles into a pattern in which husbands spend more time outside of the home compared to the wife (reinforcing the gendered public-private divide), spends more money on himself, does less housework and generally does better out of the relationship. Wives tend to see it as their job to keep the husband happy, while the husband thinks he has done all he needs to keep his wife happy just by consenting to marry her.
It is typically women who are more likely to think they need to be married in order to be happy, but in reality this is a myth. In fact it is men who do better out of marriage than women. Married men report higher levels of satisfaction than non-married men, while single women report higher levels of satisfaction than married women.
Three quarters of divorces are initiated by women, which has led to a decline in the stable married-family in recent years. Greer sees this as a good thing because the illusion of traditional family life was built on the silence of suffering women.
Women as mothers
Greer consents that motherhood can be intrinsically satisfying she argues that it is not valued by society. She says ‘mothers bear children in pain, feed them from their bodies, cherish and nourish and prepare to lose them’. Children are expected to leave their mother’s home when quite young and to ow their mothers little or nothing in return. Many of the elderly who die of hypothermia are mothers, yet their children accept no responsibility for helping to support them. Society attaches no or little value to motherhood:
‘Mother’ is not a career option; the woman who gave her all to mothering has to get in shape, find a job, and jeep young and beautiful if she wants to be loved. ‘Motherly is a word for people who are frumpish and suffocating’.
Greer suggests at least the following pieces of evidence to demonstrate that mothers are undervalued in society:
- In childbirth, the attention focuses mostly on the well-being of the child. The mother’s health takes a back-seat.
- Mothers and babies are generally not welcomed in society – in restaurants and public transport for example.
- Women are expected to return to work shortly after giving birth, on top of all of the child care duties.
- The feminine ideal is to be slim and hipless, while broad hips and the blossom of maternity are seen as monstrous. Women are expected to ‘regain their figure’ shortly after childbirth.
- After all is said and done the final role for mothers is to take the blame if their children go bad. Single mothers are here singled out for special attention.
Women as daughters
According to Greer men expect to exercise control over women and expect them to service their needs. Greer argues that daughters are quite likely to experience sexual abuse from their fathers, step-fathers and other male relatives and that this is a particularly horrendous form of patriarchy and is an extension of male heterosexuality.
She believes that such abuse is very much more common than most of us think and that ‘it is understood that heterosexual men fancy young things, that youth itself is a turn-on, but no-one is sure how young is too young. Why after all are sexy young women called ‘babes’?
Solutions to patriarchal families
While Greer does not believe that women should cut themselves off from men altogether she thinks they would be better off in matrilocal households, where all the adults are female. She believes such households have a lot to offer women, especially if they incorporate the many older women currently living alone.
Evaluations of radical feminism
A problem with Greer’s work is that it makes sweeping generalisations which are not backed up by evidence. In fairness it took me a while to find the above picture of the Camerons, most of them seem to involve them looking at each other, rather than her looking at him.
Jennifer Somerville in particular is very critical of Greer, arguing that she does not take into account the progress women have made in terms of family life in recent years.
This 2019 comparative study of the subjective well being of men and women in cohabiting and married relationships found that married women and men are no happier than those cohabiting, so at the very least we can say marriage doesn’t make you happier, and thus maybe isn’t necessary!
Evidence supporting radical feminism
Women still do more housework and childcare than men
In 2022 women did 30 minutes more housework per day than men and an hour per day more childcare.
According to a 2021 YouGov survey 38% of women in full time work say they are primarily responsible for childcare and housework compared to only 9% of men.
Around 40% of men and women say they share domestic chores and housework equally.
Things haven’t changed since 2017.
Same sex couples share domestic chores more equally
One (2020) study: Same Sex Couples Division of Labour from a Cross National Perspective found that both male and female same-sex couples divide their domestic chores more equally than opposite sex couples, and female couples share more equally than male couples.
It also found that where paid work is concerned male couples do more paid work than females: suggesting broad support for gender role socialisation norms carrying on into adulthood independently of the heterosexual family.
The shocking maternity laws in the U.S.A
25% of women in the U.S. have to return to work two weeks after childbirth (1) because their employers only give them the minimum of two weeks statutory maternity pay.
This affects women in low-paid jobs more, professional women are far more likely to get more generous maternity packages.
The problem is with social policy in America: the law only requires companies provide a minimum of two weeks paid leave, it’s a good example of social policy not working for women.
(1) (2020) Why one in four women in the U.S. return to work two weeks after childbirth
Related Posts
This material is mainly relevant to the families and households topic within A-level sociology.
Feminist perspectives on the family (which covers all three types of Feminism)
The Personal Life Perspective on the Family
The Personal Life Perspective: dogs and dead relatives are part of the family too!
It is increasingly common for people to form close, emotional relationships with their friends, pets and other ‘fictive kin’, and to regard these people (or animals) as part of their family.
People can have close ‘family like’ relationships which provide an emotional and even a financial support network without being in a ‘normal’ family, and if we wish to understand personal life today, we need to focus on the close personal connections which individuals have rather than families in the traditional sense.
The personal life perspective on the family is essentially an Interactionist perspective and criticises structural perspectives such as Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism for assuming the nuclear family is the dominant type of family and taking that as the base unit for analysis.
Rather than studying ‘the nuclear family’ in the traditional sense, we study individuals and take the time to understand their own personal perspective on their own family.
If we do this, we will find multiple definitions and understandings of the family with some people seeing pets, friends, or dead relatives as more important in their personal lives than members of their actual family in the traditional sense of the word.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean people are free to construct whatever family they see fit, they are still constrained by social norms.
Carol Smart is the main thinker associated with this perspective.
A summary of the Personal Life Perspective
Criticisms of Structural Perspectives
The Personal Life Perspective makes two main criticisms of structural perspectives on the family such as Functionalism and Marxism
- They tend to assume the traditional nuclear family is the dominant type of family. This ignores the increased diversity of families today. Compared with 50 years ago, many more people now live in other families, such as lone-parent families and so on.
- They are all structural theories. That is, they assume that families and their members are simply passive puppets manipulated by the structure of society to perform certain functions – for example, to provide the economy with a mobile labour force, or serve the needs of capitalism or of men.
The Sociology of Personal life is strongly influenced by Interactionist ideas and contrasts with structural theories. Sociologists from this perspective believe that in order to understand families, we must start from the point of view of the individuals concerned and the meanings they give to their relationships.’
Personal Life, not necessarily the family!
People can have close, emotional, and meaningful relationships without being embedded in anything like a ‘normal’ idea of a family, thus why we should be looking at personal life from the perspective of individuals rather than focusing on families as the base unit of analysis.
For example, people may have close connections (like we would normally associate with husband-wife, mother-daughter) from all or any of the following:
- Friends
- Pets
- Dead relatives.
- Fictive Kin
Fictive Kin are people who are regarded as family even though they are not related by blood, marriage or adoption.
HINT: It might be useful to remember the Personal Life Perspective as the one about ‘pets and dead relatives’!
Families are complex yet still ‘constrained’
For those people who do form families, the PLP perspective recognises that family structures are complex and that there are several different ways roles within family life may be divided up making for a huge variety in family diversity.
Moreover, different people within the same family may have different views of WHO is in that family. For example, one person might think a dead relative is still part of it, everyone else might disagree; one divorced partner in a stepfamily may regard their family as divorce-extended, the other partner whose first relationship it is might have a different conception.
However, families are still constrained by at least three factors:
- Personal family history
- Social norms
- Structural factors such as class, gender and ethnicity.
These constraints mean that people aren’t just free to make up and defined their families anyway they see fit, there are ‘normative demands’ on them made by objective reality, so this isn’t a purely postmodern take on family life.
Carol Smart: ‘Personal Life: New Directions in Sociological Thinking’
Carol Smart is the main person associated with this perspective. She has become frustrated by the fixation of many commentators with the supposed decline of the possibility of family life. She rejects many of the assumptions about the decline of family life found in theories of individualisation by authors such as Beck and Beck Gernsheim and Giddens.
Instead, her approach prioritises the bonds between people, the importance of memory and cultural heritage, the significance of emotions (both positive and negative), how family secrets work and change over time, and the underestimated importance of things such as shared possessions or homes in the maintenance and memory of relationships.
‘By focusing on people’s meanings, Carol Smart’s personal life perspective draws our attention to a range of other personal or intimate relationships that are important to people, even though they may not be conventionally defined as family. These include all kinds of relationships that individuals see as significant and give them a sense of identity, relatedness and belonging, such as:
- Relationships with friends who might be like a sister or a brother to you.
- Fictive kin: close friends who are treated as relatives, for example your mum’s best friend who you call your ‘auntie’.
- Gay and lesbian ‘chosen families’ made up of a supportive network of close friends, ex partners and others who are not related by marriage or blood.
- Relationships with dead relatives who live on in people’s memories and continue to shape their identities and affect their actions.
- Even relationships with pets. For example, Becky Tiper (2011) found in her study of children’s views of family relationships, that children frequently saw their pets as ‘part of the family’.
In short – The Family is not in decline, it is just very very different and much more diverse and complex than ever before.
Supporting evidence for the Personal Life Perspective
Fictive Kin are often regarded as part of the family
Fictive Kin are people who are regarded as family even though they are not related by blood, marriage or adoption.
According to a 2013 survey of 6500 adults in the Netherlands (1) 35% of older persons aged 61-79 were most likely to have fictive kin, as did 23% of middle-aged people, aged 41-60 and 16% of younger people, aged 18-40 had fictive kin
The paper-and-pencil questionnaire included the following question: “Who do you consider to be part of ‘your family’?” Alternatives included: partner, children, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, grandparents, grandchildren, uncles and aunts, cousins, other relatives, parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, others-in-law, and, finally, “others (a friend, neighbor, etc.).”
The final category was how ‘Fictive Kin’ was operationalized.
This study has some level of reliability as a previous 1992 Study (2) found that 40% of older people identify fictive kin as family.
Pets are often regarded as part of the family
According to a survey of 1000 households and a further 193 in-depth interviews carried out between May 2001 and December 2003 in Swansea, South Wales (3) 46/193 people spontaneously mentioned pets as part of their family.
According to Blue Cross Pet Census 95% of respondents said they view their pets like family, over 70% said they have bought their pet something nice to show them they love them, although I think this may be a case of a biased sample of hardcore pet-lovers when we look at another (2022) survey by the World Animal Foundation 52% of adults in the UK had a pet in 2022, and half of those think they make great companions, which suggests the figure regarding their pets as family is much less than 95%!
This (2023) UK petition to treat pets like children certainly suggests there is support for pets to be treated like part of the family. It is campaigning to get the law changed around how pets are treated during divorce: currently they are treated like property, treating them like children would mean their welfare has to be taken in to account during a relationship breakdown, which currently isn’t the case under British law.
Evidence of Complex family maps…
Eliza Garwood (4) carried out biographical narrative interviews with twenty-two adult children raised by LGBTQ parents.
She documents case studies of how some respondents were born to two apparently heterosexual parents, and spent their early childhoods in that relationship, but then one parent came out and/ or transitioned, broke up with the other parent and established themselves in a queer relationship, with the child being parented by two LGBTQ parents in their later childhood.
She found that many of these (now adult) children have spent considerable time and effort actively construct their kinship-stories as adults, and their sense of family is thus very complex, and often rooted in a sense of injustice about the discrimination than LGBTQ people face.
Evaluation of the Personal Life Perspective
Positive evaluations
- It helps us to understand how people themselves construct and define their relationships as ‘family’ rather than imposing traditional sociological definitions of the family from the outside.
- The personal life perspective rejects the top-down view taken by other perspectives, such as functionalism but it does see intimate relationships as performing the important function of providing us with a sense of belonging and relatedness.
- It recognises that people are active in constructing relationships. You can use this to criticise the New Right’s view of the nuclear family: the nuclear family may be in decline, but from the PLP it doesn’t matter because there’s all sorts of other relationships that can provide emotional support.
Limitations
- Taking the personal life perspective can be accused to taking too broad a view, all we can really do is describe or map out relationships.
- Traditional married and cohabiting nuclear families probably provide more financial support to children than friends and more emotional support than pets, so let’s not exaggerate the importance of certain types of personal relationship.
- It makes choosing a nationally representative sample of ‘families’ very difficult: there is so much diversity we may not be able to make generalisations from any sample.
- A recent (2022) Survey on Declining Friendship USA has found that friendship is in decline in America: people report having fewer friends than in the 1990s, and that they rely on them less for emotional support than was the case 20 years ago. This suggests that friendship might not be replacing the family, rather nothing is!
Signposting and Related posts
Late Modern Perspectives on The Family (what Smart criticises)
Understanding Society – A longitudinal study of changing households in the UK (you can use this data to assess the validity of the Personal Life Perspective)
The Personal Life Perspective is one the main perspectives on the family within the A-Level Sociology Families and Households topic
Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com
Further Reading and Sources
1 (2013) Fictive Kin just like family
(2) Fictive Kin
3 (2008) My family and other animals
(4) (2022) Queering the Kinship Story
What is the Impact of Immigration on Family Life?
Changes to the the dependency ratio and age structure are two impacts.
This post looks at the recent increase in net migration to the UK, and at some of the reasons for increasing immigration in particular, including push and pull factors. It also looks at the impact of immigration on family life in the UK.
Recent Patterns of Migration to the UK
The Office for National Statistics Net migration was actually negative during the 1970s and early 1980s, turning positive but at a relatively low level during the 1980s and early 1990s. Since 1994, it has been positive every year and rose sharply after 1997.
During the 2000s, net migration increased further, partly as a result of immigration of citizens from the countries that have joined the EU since 2004. Since the mid 2000s, annual net migration has fluctuated between approximately 150,000 and 300,000.
From 2018 Net Migration decreased from just over 300 000, coming close to 0 in the pandemic lockdown year of 2020.
However since 2020 net migration increased rapidly to reach 600 000 in 2022.
Migration statistics to and from the UK in 2022
According to the latest migration statistics from the the ONS(1):
- 1.2 million people immigrated into the UK 2022
- 557,000 people emigrated from the UK
- This means that net migration to the UK in 2022 was 606,000.
- Most people arriving to the UK in 2022 were non-EU nationals (925,000), followed by EU (151,000) and British (88,000).
- Immigration has been unusually high over the last 18 months of available statistics, primarily due to increased numbers of non-EU people coming to the UK for humanitarian reasons from Ukraine and Hong Kong. Immigration figures should reduce in future years, as they did in the last quarter of 2022.
- The proportion of people immigrating to the UK has been decreasing since Brexit.
Why do people come to the UK?
For non-EU nationals the main reasons people came to the UK in 2022 were
- Study – 39% of non EU immigrants came to the UK to study, mostly at university.
- Work – 25% of non EU immigrants come to the UK for work,
- 19% of immigrants came via humanitarian routes, such as the Ukraine scheme.
- 8% of immigrants entered the UK claiming asylum.
For EU nationals, the proportions are slightly different: 50% came for work related reasons and a further 25% for study.
Where do people come to the UK from?
According to the Migration Observatory (2) the top birth countries for UK immigrants are:
- India (9.3%)
- Poland (7.1%)
- Pakistan
- The Republic of Ireland
- Germany
- Romania
- Nigeria
- South Africa
- Italy
- China
Note that these are not just the origins of people who came to the UK in 2022. They are the birth countries of everyone who came to the UK at some point!
Asylum Seekers Coming to the UK
In the year ending September 2022, the UK received 72,027 asylum applications from main applicants only (3).
The UK is below the European average for asylum applications and ranks 18th among EU countries per head of population.
Asylum seekers were around eight per cent of immigrants to the UK in 2018.
The number of asylum seekers in the UK has doubled since 2018, but this is a global trend.
What is an asylum seeker?
An asylum seeker is someone who:
- flees their homeland
- arrives in another country , whichever way they can
- makes themselves known to the authorities
- submits an asylum application
- has a legal right to stay in the country while awaiting a decision.
The Causes of Increasing Migration to the UK
The simplest level of analysis lies in explaining increasing migration to the UK in terms of push and pull factors:
Push Factors refer to problems which encourage a person to leave or emigrate from their country.
Pull Factors refer to the real or perceived benefits of another country which attract people to it, or migrate towards it.
You should be able to identify a number of push and pull factors from the material above note down at least two push and pull factors which repel people from other countries and attract them towards the UK.
Increasing globalisation is also fundamentally linked to globalisation, which is covered below.
The Impact of Immigration on Family Life
There are three main effects of increasing immigration on family life:
- Population size is increasing because net migration is increasing. If it were not for high net migration the UK population would be shrinking due to low birth rates, which on their own are below the fertility rate required to replace the population, which is 2.1. babies per woman.
- The age structure changes. Immigration lowers that average age of the population both directly and indirectly. Directly because immigrants tend to be younger by 10 years than the British born population. Indirectly because Immigrant women have a higher fertility ratio – they have more babies than British born women.
- The dependency ratio changes. Here immigration has three effects:
- Immigrants are more likely to be of working age and this thus helps lower the dependency ratio.
- However because they are younger, immigrants have more children and so the immigrants’ children add to the dependent population.
- Finally, the longer a group is settled in the country, the closer their fertility rate comes to the national average, reducing their distinct impact on the dependency ratio.
Impacts on Public Services..
It is not possible to say with certainty what the implications of migration are for public services, and these impacts are likely to vary by area and depending on the type of public service.
Migrants contribute to demand for public services. If foreign-born people in the UK used public services in the same way as demographically similar UK-born people, they would be expected to make less use of health and social care, but greater use of education.
Migrants also contribute to financing and providing public services, and are over represented in the health care and social care work forces.
The Political Impact of Globalisation
States now have policies that seek to control immigration, absorb migrants into society and deal with increased ethnic and cultural diversity. More recently policies have also become linked to national security and anti-terrorism policies.
Assimilationism was the first state policy approach to immigration. It aimed to encourage immigrants to adopt the language, values and customs of the host culture, to become ‘like us’. However assimilationist policies have mainly failed because of the desire of many migrants to retain aspects of their ‘culture of origin’.
Multiculturalism accepts that migrants may wish to retain a separate cultural identity. One consequence of multicultural policy is the emergence of multicultural education in schools. However, Eriksen criticises such education as encouraging ‘shallow diversity’ – so we accept the surface elements of other cultures such as Samosas and Saris, but it fails to address issues surrounding ‘deep diversity’ such as arranged marriages.
Since September 11th many politicians have demanded a return to assimilationsim
Two further consequences include –
- A More Multicultural Society
- A divided working class and the white working class backlash.
Sources and Signposting
This material is usually taught as part of the families and households module within A-level sociology.
(1) Office for National Statistics: Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending December 2022.
(3) UNHCR Asylum in the UK
Sources used to write the above include information from the ONS, British Red Cross and Rob Webb et al’s AS level Sociology book for the AQA.
Changes to Marriage and Divorce – Infographic
I knocked up this brief ‘infographic’ in Skitch on the iPad – explaining the decline of marriage and the increase in divorce.
You might also like the more detailed posts on this topic (which should be linked below)
Marxist Feminist Perspectives on Family Life
women do housework and childcare for free and this benefits capitalism.
Marxist Feminists argue that the exploitative relations of capitalism are what causes exploitative patriarchal relations within the family.
Individual men may benefit from the unpaid domestic labour and childcare which mainly women do, but it is the capitalist system within is the main cause of women being in the subordinate housewife and mother roles.
It is ultimately capitalism which needs to be brought down in order for patriarchal relations within the family to cease.
Women’s free domestic labour benefits capitalism
A main focus for marxist feminists in the 1970s was ‘housework’ which was seen as the intersection of class and gender based modes of exploitation.
Housework was not regarded as real work, and thus unpaid, because of the structure of the capitalist system. It was primarily women who did this work for free, never pausing to think that they might even be paid for it. While male breadwinners benefited directly from the free labour of their female partners, the main beneficiary was the capitalist economy: women provided for the domestic needs of men so they could keep serving the needs of the system through doing paid work.
To Quote Margaret Benston:
‘The amount of unpaid labour performed by women is very large and very profitable to those who own the means of production. To pay women for their work, even at minimum wage scales, would involve a massive redistribution of wealth. At present, the support of the family is a hidden tax on the wage earner – his wage buys the labour power of two people’ (Margaret Benston, 1972).
In other words, all of the chores associated with the traditional, expressive role, such as domestic labour, child care and emotion work are necessary to ‘keep the family going’ and so women’s unpaid work ultimately ends up benefiting the capitalist class, because they only have to pay the male breadwinner a wage. The woman attends to the husband’s needs and ‘keeps him going’ as a worker for free.
A related point here is made by Fran Ansley who sees the emotional support provided by men as a safety valve for the frustrations produced in the husband by working in a capitalist system:
‘When wives play their traditional role as takers of shit, they often absorb their husband’s legitimate anger and frustration at their own powerlessness and oppression.’
(NB This analysis is essentially a more critical view of Parson’s ‘warm bath theory’ – the theory of the stabilisation of adult personalities – in Marxist-Feminist terms this is not ‘different but equal’ roles, it is a case of different an unequal – and this inequality benefits capitalism)
Also, because the husband has to pay for his wife and children he cannot easily withdraw his labour power even if he is exploited. This reduces his bargaining power in relation to his employer and makes it more likely that he will put up with a low wage rather than risk being sacked by striking for a higher wage.
‘As an economic unit the nuclear family is a valuable stabilising force in capitalist society. Since the husband-father’s earnings pay for the production which is done in the home, his ability to withhold labour is much reduced’ (Margaret Benston, 1972).
The reproduction of labour power
Capitalism also benefits from women being the primary child carers. As with domestic work childcare is done mainly by women for free, and from a marxist-feminist perspective this is women bringing up the next generation of workers for the capitalist system.
The traditional nuclear family not only physically reproduces cheap labour for the the ruling class, it also teaches the ideas that the Capitalist class require for their future workers to be passive.
Diane Feeley (1972) argues that the family is an authoritarian unit dominated by the husband in particular and adults in general. The family has an ‘authoritarian ideology which teaches passivity, not rebellion and children learn to submit to parental authority thereby learning to accept their place in the hierarchy of power and control in capitalist society.
Ideological conditioning
Ideologies about domestic work and childcare being naturally women’s work are mainly responsible for keeping this system in place.
Back in the 1970s at least women generally didn’t question their roles as housewives and mothers.
Evaluations of the Marxist Feminist Perspective on The Family
Marxist-Feminism has too narrow a focus on the role of economics in ‘causing’ patriarchal relations at home. This is a problem when women are in subordinate domestic roles in many pre-capitalist societies, suggesting patriarchy is a more general problem.
Marxist Feminist analysis doesn’t seem to hold up to social changes which have taken place since the 1970s:
- There are many more job opportunities for women in 2023 and no gender pay gap for younger workers, suggesting the end of the breadwinner role for men.
- This gives women a lot more freedom to be the main or equal income earners and the majority of households are now dual-earner households meaning Marxist-feminist analysis no longer applies.
- Many more women today live alone and don’t have children, this analysis doesn’t apply to them.
- social policies such as the shared parental leave act (2015) and more free child care for children as young as nine months (2024) make it easier for mothers to avoid the full-time domestic and housewife role.
The only real support for Marxist feminism today lies in the fact that when women become mothers they are more likely to take time off work than fathers and they do more housework (still today), but most women are in paid work most of their working lives, so even this is pretty weak evidence.
There might still be a case that the lives of working class women and single mothers are relatively worse off because of capitalism: maybe this theory selectively applies to families with lower incomes; maybe single parents (85% of whom are women) have higher poverty rates because capitalism doesn’t value their free childcare sufficiently.
However, you certainly can’t argue that the root cause of women’s exploitation at home is caused by capitalism because capitalism (as neoliberalism) has intensified in Britain since the 1970s but women’s lives in general have improved.
Research supporting Marxist Feminism
Being a father seems to push men into the breadwinner role and women into the caring role.
Becoming a young mother results in more women leaving work, but has the opposite effect on young men.
For 25 to 34 year olds the respective employment rates are:
- 86% for non-fathers compared to 92% for fathers
- 89% for non-mothers to 69% for mothers.
So childless young women are MORE likely to be in employment than childless young men, but this changes drastically when those young women have children. Young women, it seems, are far more likely than men to leave employment and become the primary child carers.
Source: How does motherhood affect paid work?
Women then gradually return to work as children get older…
31% of women with a 1 year old are in employment compared to 49% with an 18 year old. The percentages of men in work with children aged 1 to 18 are level.
This suggests many mothers still want (or have to work) but nonetheless it is still women who take the career-penalties associated with taking time off work to be the primary carers.
A (2019) longitudinal study Employment Pathways and Occupational Change after Childbirth examined the pathways of men and women returning to work and found that of women working full time prior to childbirth only 44% returned to work full time after 3 years.
There was some variation: those with degrees were twice as likely to return to full time work (so 88% after 3 years) and those working for the public sector or large organisations with over 50 workers were also more likely to return to work full time.
Related Posts
Feminist perspectives on the family (which covers all three types of Feminism)
The Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family
The Radical Feminist perspective on the family
Sources used
The material above is adapted from Haralambos and Holborn: Sociology Themes and Perspectives.
Ingles, D (2015) An Invitation to Social Theory
The Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family
We need more equal working relationships to have more equal domestic relationships!
Liberal Feminists argue there is nothing inherently wrong with the traditional nuclear family or the public-private divide between work and politics on the one hand private family life life on the other.
While liberal feminists are keen to see greater equality in the private, domestic sphere they believe that feminists should mainly focus on campaigning for social polices which promote equality in the workplace and other areas of the public sphere because greater equality within the family is something that can be achieved through empowering women in politics and work.
The more political and economic freedom women have, they more power they have in domestic life to demand that men pull their weight or to simply leave unequal relationships if they so choose and go it alone, or find a better partner.
This fits in the with liberalist idea that family life is private: political campaigns focus on public life and then then largely leave it up to women to make what choices are best for them in their private, family lives. Liberal feminist campaigns focus on social polices and legal frameworks which give women the freedom to make those choices.
Jennifer Somerville: Feminism and the Family
Jennifer Somerville (2000) (1) suggests proposals to improve family life for women that involve modest policy reforms rather than revolutionary change. She can thus be characterised as a liberal feminist, although she herself does not use this term.
To Somerville, many feminists have failed to acknowledge progress for women such as the greater freedom to go into paid work, and the greater degree of choice over whether to marry or cohabit, when and whether to have children, and whether to take part in a heterosexual or same-sex relationship or to simply live on their own.
The increased choice for women and the rise of the dual-earner household (in which both partners in work) has helped create greater equality within relationships. Somerville argues that ‘some modern men are voluntarily committed to sharing in those routine necessities of family survival, or they can be persuaded, cajoled, guilt-tripped or bullied’. Despite this, however, ‘women are angry, resentful and above all disappointed in men.’ Many men do not take on their full share of responsibilities and often these men can be ‘shown the door’.
Somerville raises the possibility that women might do without male partners, especially as so many prove inadequate, and instead get their sense of fulfilment from their children. Unlike Germain Greer, however, Somerville does not believe that living in a household without an adult male is the answer – the high figures for remarriage suggest that heterosexual attraction and the need for intimacy and companionship mean that heterosexual families will not disappear.
However, it remains the case that the inability of men to ‘pull their weight’ in relationships means that high rates of relationship breakdowns will continue to be the norm which will lead to more complex familial relationships as women end one relationship and attempt to rebuild the next with a new (typically male) partner.
Somerville argues that many young women feel some sense of grievance about inequalities in their domestic lives but do not feel entirely sympathetic towards the feminist movement more generally, and so there is little support for some of the more radical political agendas of radical and marxist feminists.
Liberal Feminist Polices for Improving family life
Feminists should focus on policies which will encourage greater equality in work which should help women demand and cajole men into doing their fair share of housework and childcare.
One set of policies which Somerville thinks particularly important are those aimed at helping working parents. The working hours and culture associated with many jobs are incompatible with family life. Many jobs are based on the idea of a male breadwinner who relies on a non-working wife to take care of the children.
Three types of social policy which can help working parents include:
- encouraging employers to have more flexible working hours, allowing mothers and fathers more freedom to choose the days they work and the times they start and finish work.
- Policies which encourage equal sharing of maternity and paternity leave, such as the recent shared parental leave act (2015)
- Policies which provide more free childcare for younger children, such a the government recently brining in care for children as young as 9 months (from 2024).
The final two policies are summarised in this post on social policy and the family.
Liberal Feminists also support the monitoring of the promotion and pay of women in higher level professional careers because this is where the gender pay gap is largest.
Evaluation of the Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family
Support for Liberal Feminism
There is more support for gradual changes such as making small adjustments to social policy compared to more radical solutions suggested by radical feminists, thus liberal feminist strategies are more practical and have more chance of succeeding.
There does seem to be a correlation between women’s empowerment in public and working life and greater gender equality at home. More specifically, some recent research (link forthcoming) has found that more flexible working arrangements lead to men doing a more fair share of the housework.
Support for traditional gender roles is declining: a relatively recent edition of the British Social Attitudes Survey measured support for traditional gender roles and found that in 2017 only 9% of people surveyed believed women should be the primary child carers and housewives, down from 42% (!) in 1984.
Dual earner households are the norm in 2022
In 2022….
- 50% of couples consisted of both men and women working full time
- The man worked full time and the woman worked full time in 44% of couples
- The woman worked full time and the man worked part time in only 3% couples.
However In 2012 the percentage of female full-time, male part-time couples was 2.6%, so the main change has been a shift from male-full time to female part-time couples towards both partners working full-time. What we are NOT seeing is a shift towards females in the main breadwinner role.
Criticisms of Liberal Feminism
The shift to working from home during the Pandemic, and more generally has resulted in women doing a greater share of the domestic work, while flexible working hours at work (where men and women still go out to paid work but can pick their start and end times) results in domestic work at home being shared more equally.
This kind of supports Liberal Feminism because it suggests when men and women retreat more into the domestic sphere, more inequality is the result, but if they spend more time in the public sphere (at work) with more flexibility, then more equality at home is the result.
Radical Feminists argue that liberal feminism fails to recognize the extent that women are still unequal to men in domestic life. Despite progress towards gender equality in the workplace it is mainly mothers that lose out compared to fathers when children come along which criticises the Liberal Feminist view that focussing on the public sphere is sufficient to bring about equality in domestic life.
Radical Feminists also criticise liberal feminists for focusing mainly on heterosexual relationships and limiting their analysis to s*x differences between biological males and females.
A Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family – A Summary
- Causes of inequality in relationships – A combination of two things – (1) Mainstream working culture which requires long and inflexible working hours which are still based on the idea of the main breadwinner, (2) Men refusing to pull their weight in relationships.
- Solutions to Inequality – Increase female empowerment in the public sphere through reformist social policies designed to make working hours more flexible, shared parental leave and more free child care.
- Criticisms – 100 years of gradual reform and women still do more housework! It also only looks at heterosexual relationships.
Related Posts
Feminist perspectives on the family (which covers all three types of Feminism)
The Marxist Feminist perspective on the family
The Radical Feminist perspective on the family
Sources
(1) Sommerville, J (2000) Feminism and the Family: Politics and Society in the UK and USA.
Haralambos and Holborn – Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition
ONS – Gender Pay Gap in the UK 2022.
An article from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (2014) – Women put at particular disadvantage by the requirement to work full time
Workingmums.co.uk – A site which works with policy makers and employers to encourage more flexible working hours
Liberal Feminism is one of three main perspectives on the family, within the A-level sociology families and households topic. For a briefer summary of this perspective on the family, along with Marxist and Radical and Feminism, please click here.
