Conjugal Role Relationships (AQA GCSE Sociology): Exam Questions

Item A

From Item A, examine one weakness of the research.

Identify and explain one factor that may account for differences in the allocation of domestic tasks as shown in Item A.

Identify and explain one advantage of using a mixed methods approach to investigate conjugal role relationships.

Item B

From Item B, identify and describe the research method used by Willmott and Young in the early 1970s, including what you know of their perspective on the family.

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe a family in which a man holds power and authority?

Identify and describe one way in which conjugal role relationships may be segregated.

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe the experience of women who have both a paid job and have to do most of the housework?

Item B

In 1982, Ann Oakley defined the conventional family as a nuclear family that consisted of a married couple and their children who lived together. She identified a number of features associated with conventional families:

• Women were expected to do unpaid work inside the home while men were expected to do paid work outside the home.

• The man’s economic power was linked to his income from paid work.

• The woman’s dependence on the man’s wages was an aspect of inequality.

Statistically the conventional family is no longer the norm, but according to Oakley the idea of the conventional family life remained a powerful one in society.

Source: Oakley, A, Conventional Families, 1982.

From Item B, identify and describe one way in which Oakley saw the conventional family as being patriarchal, including what you know of her perspective on the family.

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe a family in which a woman holds power and authority?

Item A

In 1974, Ann Oakley collected information from 40 married women who had one child or more under the age of 5. All of the women were British or Irish born and aged between 20 and 30 years old. Half of her sample were working class and half were middle class. All of the women lived in the London area.

Oakley found greater equality in terms of the allocation of domestic tasks between married couples in the middle class than in the working class. However, in both social classes, she found little evidence of their husbands sharing the housework. Only 15% had a husband who shared domestic work to a significant level.

Source: Oakley, A, The Sociology of Housework (1974)

Identify and explain one factor that may account for differences in the allocation of domestic tasks as shown in Item A.

Which term is commonly used by sociologists to describe a marriage with equally shared domestic roles?

What role do women traditionally perform in the family?

Describe the double shift experienced by women in marriage.

Identify and describe one example of how patriarchy can affect the power relationship within families.

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe the experience of women who have both a paid job and have to do most of the housework?

Discuss how far sociologists would agree that gender roles are equal in families in Britain today.

Discuss how far sociologists would agree that gender roles are equal in families in Britain today.

What term is commonly used by sociologists to describe the role men traditionally perform in the family?

Discuss how far sociologists would agree that families in Britain today are symmetrical.

Item B

This table appears in a paper by the sociologists Robert and Rhona Rapoport published in 1982, they have used a variety of sources to identify class based differences in relationships within marriage and child rearing.

Sources: Bott (1971), Goldthorpe (1969), Newson and Newson (1970).

Discuss how far sociologists agree that in Britain today social classes have different experiences of marriage and family life.