Analyse the Extent to Which Roles and Relationships Within the Family Have Changed

The roles and relationships within the family have changed throughout the years, with men being less embarrassed to push a pram, to women going out to work while the men looked after the children. This could be due to the changes that took place in the past century, such as changes in women’s position, geographical mobility, new technology and higher living standards.

According to Parsons, in the traditional nuclear family, the roles of husbands and wives are segregated. His functionalist model of the family shows a clear division of labour between spouses, with the husbands having instrumental roles, known as providing for the family, and wives having expressive roles to do with socialising the children and being a homemaker. This allows the husband, and the wife to have clear set out tasks but on the other hand, people could say the women have more to deal with and the men have less to do. Parsons also argues that the division of labour is natural because women are ‘naturally’ suited to the nurturing role and the men to that of a provider. Other sociologists have criticised Parsons, for example, Young and Willmott argue that men are now taking a greater share of domestic tasks and more wives are becoming wage earners. Furthermore, feminist sociologists reject Parsons’ view that the division of labour is natural, and that it only benefits men. From Parson’s idea of family roles, it could be argued that the family roles have not changed at all, yet the criticisms show that the family roles have changed a little.

Elizabeth Bott distinguished between two types of conjugal roles, which are segregated conjugal roles and joint conjugal roles. Segregated conjugal roles are where the couple have separate roles, and it’s an idea similar to Parson’s. While, joint conjugal roles are where the couple share tasks such as housework and childcare and spend leisure time together. Joint conjugal roles have a major advantage of the couple being able to both take part in the...