Читать книгу A Sociology of Family Life - Deborah Chambers - Страница 17

During the 1970s and 1980s, feminist perspectives led debates and research on the family. The notion of the ‘male breadwinner’ and the wider patriarchal structuring of family life were centrally questioned. The idea that the family is a cooperative unit founded on common interests and mutual support between husband and wife was challenged. Monolithic conceptions of the family as a static and unified social grouping were viewed by feminist scholarship as barriers against an acceptance and understanding of the underlying causes of women’s oppression in gendered family relationships. Many studies revealed that, despite the idea of the companionate marriage, marriage continued to be an unequal ‘partnership’ between men and women structured by a highly gendered domestic division of labour (Delphy and Leonard 1992; England and Farkas 1986; Mansfield and Collard 1987; Oakley 1974). Domestic violence and high levels of divorce highlighted the discrepancy between the ideals and realities of marriage. By the 1990s, almost half of marriages were ending in separation or divorce in the USA, UK and other western nations (Allan 1996).

Feminist perspectives critiqued earlier studies by drawing attention to the linked social conditions causing inequalities of gender in the home, the labour market and in poverty after divorce (Barrett 1980; Firestone 1970). Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh (1982) identified the term ‘family’ as a form of ideology that supports women’s subordination. Feminist scholars pointed out that dissatisfaction among wives was being undermined by appealing to the ‘naturalness’ of the biological unit of the heterosexual couple and their children. Barrett and McIntosh initiated new approaches in which the term ‘family’ was replaced by more effective terms such as ‘households’, to interrogate the ideology of the family. By shifting the focus of attention, feminists were able to address the inequalities experienced by women in marriage, domestic labour and employment, and family life. From the 1970s, feminist scholars argued that gender inequalities were being deflected by claims that the patriarchal structure of the heterosexual family was innate. New ways of analysing the family, led by feminist approaches, were combined with Marxist ideas. Authors such as Rosalind Coward (1983) explored whether the family reinforces patriarchy or capitalism or some other system beyond the family, reflecting the work of Engels.

Feminist sociologists advanced debates by emphasizing the socially constructed nature of family life and by focusing on the division of domestic tasks such as childcare and housework between men and women. A range of studies challenged the validity of assertions of a ‘symmetrical family’ by Young and Willmott (1957, 1987) in their study of kinship in East London. Young and Willmott claimed that, in industrialized societies, husbands and wives shared domestic roles and family responsibilities more fairly. Responding to this finding, Ann Oakley (1974) legitimized the academic study of domestic work at a time when housework had not been considered worthy of sociological study, as it was such a routine and private activity. Until then, the domestic sphere had been rendered invisible. Women continued to bear responsibility for the majority of domestic and caring chores. This occurred at the cost of women’s leisure and their participation in the workforce (Esping-Andersen et al. 2013; Hochschild 1989; Hook 2006; Kan et al. 2011; Sullivan et al. 2018).

By the 1970s and 1980s, feminist research critiqued wider perceptions of gender inequalities as a natural expression of biological sex differences by pinpointing the gendered power relations involved in housework and the socialization of children. This approach was advanced by Simone de Beauvoir’s famous critique of gender inequalities in her book The Second Sex (1972 [1949]), where she made the famous statement ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.’ Feminist authors argued that the apparently more physical and energetic behaviour of boys, and caring and obedient behaviour of girls, were the result of gender socialization and sexist ideologies (Oakley 1972; Stanley and Wise 1983). For example, the maternal deprivation thesis advanced by professionals such as John Bowlby (1953) elevated the mystique of the emotional and psychological bonding between mother and child, promoting the idea that women who take on paid employment do not make good mothers. According to Bowlby, a separation from the mother, when the child is cared for by another person (such as the grandmother), was perceived to have an adverse effect on the child. Bowlby’s maternal deprivation thesis, which assigned biological mothers the primary role of caregiver, was critiqued by feminist perspectives as an ideology of ‘bad mothering’ (Davidoff et al. 1999).

Gender segregation in the labour market was also critiqued by feminist interventions as a mechanism by which gendered roles in the family are extended to and naturalized in paid employment. The exploitation of women as a ‘reserve army of labour’, to be used in times of labour shortages or during wars, and the belief that their wages were just ‘pin money’ for superfluous luxuries, were driven by the widespread view that women’s employment was simply a side-line to husbands’ wages. Feminist scholars pointed out that gendered power relations that underpinned the division of labour in the family were reflected and perpetuated by a gendered labour market. Women continue to be channelled into low-paid ‘feminized labour’ that reflects the domestic and childcare tasks assigned to women, such as nursing, teaching and catering (Delphy and Leonard 1992; Hartmann 1976; Oakley 1974; Walby 1985; Woodroffe 2009). Women still face discrimination in highly paid professional and managerial careers, where they confront a ‘glass ceiling’ resulting from a ‘motherhood penalty’ over the years after parenthood (Budig et al. 2012; Cukrowska-Torzewska and Lovasz 2020). Feminist scholars criticized gender disparities in the distribution of resources at home and the control of family finances by husbands (Pahl 1989).

Feminist studies of the 1970s and 1980s also addressed the way the family serves as a context for the oppression and physical abuse of women. Formerly, violence in the home, including ‘wife battering’, marital rape and child abuse were routinely ignored, but now they were being uncovered and researched as key issues within feminist research. The prevalent idea of the home as a haven for children, women and older people was challenged (Dobash and Dobash 1992). Domestic violence, child abuse, divorce, widowhood, mental and physical health problems, poverty and homelessness were now being exposed (see Dallos and McLaughlin 1993; and chapter 3). Feminist writing on the family in the 1970s and 1980s was, then, diverse in its political and theoretical objectives, and extensive in empirical scope. Feminist contributions to the sociology of the family were so fundamental that feminist scholarship formed a set of overriding critiques that challenged conventional sociological views of family life as harmonious and egalitarian (Smart 2007). It was pointed out that the family was no longer viewed as sacrosanct or inevitably functional for its members, and that men benefitted from family life more than women.

In the 1950s and 1960s, all other forms of intimacy that did not conform to heterosexual marriage and family life were perceived as inferior or deviant (Holden 2007; Porche and Purvin 2008; Rosenfeld 1999). In Britain, male homosexuality was illegal until 1967. In the USA, homosexuality was defined as a mental disorder until as late as 1973 by the American Psychological Association. Under these circumstances, men and women felt pressured to conceal their sexual identities, with some feeling pressured to marry (Rosenfeld 1999). Legal recognition of non-heterosexual relationships took place in 2005 in Britain, when civil partnerships were introduced. This history is more complicated in the USA since it differs from state to state, with Massachusetts being the first to authorize same-sex marriage in 2004. Feminist work also contributed to the foundations of queer theory by questioning the naturalness of the heterosexual relationships on which family life is founded (Dalton and Bielby 2000; and see the Introduction to this book). ‘Heteronormative’ is a term used in queer theory, introduced by Michael Warner (1991), to describe the expectations, social pressures and constraints exerted on individuals when heterosexuality is taken as the norm in society.

By the 1990s, debates about sexual politics were advanced by queer theory to question the naturalness of heterosexual relationships and expose the historical and cultural labelling of alternatives to heterosexuality as deviant (see, for example, Berlant and Warner 1998, 2000; Butler 1990; Seidman 1996). The following chapter addresses some of queer theory’s key influences on the sociology of the family to understand LGBTQ+ intimacies and accent the fluidity of relationships.