The Changing Roles of Men and Women in Families in Britain over the Past Half Century - Term Paper Example

ROLES Looking at roles of men and women in families over time in Britain, many theories are applicable. Family developmental theory includes two basic concepts:  one is the life cycle. The family life cycle “divides the family experiences into stages over the life span and describes changes in family structure and roles during each stage. The other concept is the developmental task. Developmental tasks are the growth responsibilities that arise at certain stages in the life of the family” (Family, 2010). This theory is based on the assumption that throughout their lives, people moved from different life stages. Theories of family development are very popular and show that this culture, at least, still looks in part to systems and theories to solve some of its more pressing classification and categorization problems. Traditionally the role of the state has been the role of the patriarch, as the enforcer of gender division. In looking at how gender roles changed in Britain, the answer for this question is that in fact, the industrial revolution actually resulted in less work in the household, so technically less work for mother, but more work for women outside of the household. The basic assumption of the current investigation is that the industrialization process in Britain has been so innovative and rapid that it has not only brought new responsibilities, but also new expectations of women in and outside of nuclear family roles. As industrialization advanced, so did the statue of women, resulting in higher expectation for the mothers at home, but also higher expectations of the active-working women, both considered as one. Before women gained the right to vote, they were unequal in society in many ways. They could not basically participate in the government of the country, and they were barred from everything but the domestic sphere, which was where they were expected to stay. They were basically expected to take care of the house, do the cooking and cleaning, take care of the children, and let the men go out and vote, because they weren’t considered good enough, smart enough, or independent enough to be able to do something like this on their own. It is ironic that some people even today are not independent or smart enough to do things on their own. But in other ways, history has changed, because women had enough of this situation of inequality and got involved in an active struggle. They were able to raise themselves up from ignorance and do something truly noble and important, in the face of a lot of enemies as well. Tracing the history of the nuclear family, in Britain men left agriculturally based economies as a result of cash needs, in order to become industrial wage earners in places like factories. Factories streamlined labor during this time because they provided steady and dependable wages, not ones that were subject to drought and swarms of bugs eating the factories. Workers felt more secure, and were often paid more, even though conditions were poor. At this point, according to Cohen, while children went to school, this left the mother of the family at home alone with labor-saving devices, and no real expectations. The author notes how even today, women spend too much time in a lonely domestic role (Cohen, 1983). After women got the right to vote, the role of the state changed somewhat and there was a lot of hope, combined with the women’s liberation movement, that there was finally going to be equality. The Nineteenth Amendment was passed to prevent discrimination from voting rights based on gender reasons. But underneath the surface, the state continued to act as the patriarchy. Patriarchy is used to define the control and social control mechanisms of the state in terms of gender, stating that males are in a position of power and women in one of sublimation. Patriarchy can be applied to the role of the state in women’s issues to explain inequities in the system. “The social roles men and women occupy may account for gender differences... Women are thought to have poorer experiences within any given role (role strain theory), have more conflicts among their different roles (role-configuration theory), or have fewer role opportunities available to them (role accumulation hypothesis) compared to men” (Ericsson and Ciarlo, 2000). There are also other various gender role theories which use the patriarchy as a target of oppression and as a way of explaining why women in state institutions have sometimes been overrepresented historically in terms of certain perceived illnesses that were often socially based. In a more detailed sociological resource on family development theory, some of the basic goals of the theory are discussed. “Family development … has uniquely pioneered the effort to describe and explain the processes of change in families. Family time—the sequence of stages precipitated internally by the demands of family members (e.g., biological, psychological, and social needs) and externally by the larger society (e.g., social expectations and ecological constraints)—is the most significant focal point of the family development perspective” (Family, 2010). This shows how family development theory is different from others. There are also changes in gender roles discussed in Cohen’s text that have affected the working status of women in Britain and worldwide. Where women used to be socially defined, if not necessarily as independent and powerful individuals in a matriarchal society, at the very least as capable producers, they became defined with the advent of the nuclear family as domestic keepers who provided the dominant father figure with support, raised the children, and were also defined by their conspicuous consumption of time-saving household gadgets. According to Cohen, at this point, men were suddenly jettisoned into the role of the breadwinner, in which they were seen to be at odds with the world to provide their families with the only means of support (1983). It is no wonder that the tangled masculine identity of the modern age is commonly seen to be mixed up in persecution complexes. Many men simply could not be the sole provider of income for their family. All things considered show to a certain extent how extended familial and kin relationships became less common as households began to employ less servants and require less help, as well as become less central to the extended family unit in terms of production. “The size of the family gradually shrank as families lost apprentices, live-in laborers, and kin who had previously lived within the household when it was a center of employment” (Patch, 2004). Historically, no matter what the setting, over the last few hundred years, the home moved from a place of production and employment to simply a place of residence, and its inhabitants dwindled proportionately with the increasing industrial sophistication of the nation, leading to the formation of a smaller group of people forming a core unit of familial ties, often only consisting of the biological parents and their children. This issue is relevant in terms of how it affects society as well in terms of looking at how the metaphorical mother works and why, in terms of sexual and gender identity and roles. Roles of males and females in marriage have changed a great deal in the twentieth century, with the idea of the nuclear family with a male breadwinner waning as more women are being seen in the light of equality as functional and dynamic people rather than passive pawns of a male-dominated society. As a result, more marriages today are being based on personal fulfillment than they are upon socioeconomic matchmaking strategies, which may have been used more in the past. Therefore it is also relevant to see how what has changed and what has remained the same in this regard affects the degree to which couples are happy in a marriage, as well as how gender roles and behaviors affect these variables. “The congruence between ones gender role attitudes and gender role behaviors has proven to have implications for ones psychological and marital health. Well-being is generally higher when people occupy roles that are consistent with their gender role ideology (for a review, see Barnett & Hyde, 2001; Hoffman, 1989)” (Rauer and Volling, 2005). That is, if people in a marriage see that they and their spouse are playing the right roles, they may be happier with each other. Gender roles are considered to be certain behaviors which differ with male and female identity and socialization patterns. In other words, a “one size fits all” approach to looking at mothers work habits may not work, if the marriage is made up of people of different sexes. Globally, and including countries outside Britain, there have been many progressive strides made in the women’s liberation movement worldwide in the past forty years. Different nations and cultures have different estimations of this progress within different structures. A lot has changed during the twentieth century, and great strides have been made in terms of equality and liberation for women, and, more recently, their introduction into business and executive circles, though not in large numbers. One of the main strides that has occurred more recently within the women’s movement is a shift in emphasis from women’s liberation as it is perceived in a mode that stresses middle-class economics to a more socially concerned paradigm of liberation that unites the rich and poor in their struggles. Gender roles and status orientations conflated with these variables are the subject of a great deal of extant critical and research literature in the present, but it is important to focus on problems in the theoretical past of various constructions like sociological theory and theory of gender roles in society, while looking at current feminist theories as only the start. Different authors have different theoretical paradigms associated with these themes, or different frameworks in which to place data or further theoretical propositions and/or modifications, and many of these paradigms involve a split between theories that are more feminist in nature and theories that are more based on other perspectives which seek to explain behavior. In Britain as elsewhere, the individual should increase both in her positive levels of self esteem and in their general feelings of worth and capability in the face of future obstacles and challenges that await them, but the issue of body image attached to self-worth is often a significant obstacle in today’s culture. One generally has to go no further than the local supermarket or bookstore magazine rack to see what is going on in society in terms of presenting body images that provoke a sociological response in a functionalist articulation of collective urging. Fashion magazines show images of models who are thin to the point of being emaciated as a form of punishing the female body, and people tend to buy into this image quite literally and transfer the society’s values to their own personal and respective value-sets in a way that searches for a viable way to approach society’s ideal male/female form. The illusory nature of this ideal is not directly confronted; it does not seem to matter that one generally does not see these models anywhere but on the shelves REFERENCE Allan, G. (ed) (1999) The Sociology of the Family. A Reader Oxford: Blackwell. (R),  Bernardes, J. (1997) Family Studies: An Introduction London: Routledge.(E),  Cowan, R (1983). More Work for Mothers. New York: Basic Ericsson, N. and J. Ciarlo (2000). Gender, Social Roles, and Mental Health: An Epidemiological Perspective. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research. Morgan, D. (1990) ‘Issues of Critical Sociological Theory: Men in Families’, in Sprey, J. (ed) Fashioning Family Theory London:Sage.(R)  Finch, J. (2007) ‘Displaying Families’ in Sociology, Volume 41(1) (R) Patch, Diana W. (2004). Rethinking the Nuclear Family Model. www.celf.ucla.edu/celf04-patch.pdf. Rauer, A and B Volling (2005). The role of husbands and wives emotional expressivity in the marital relationship. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2294/is_9-10_52/ai_n14938948 Family theories and methods (2010). http://www.springerlink.com/content/j505224515706263/ Read More