The domestic division of labour, including the symmetrical family debate, the dual burden and triple shift, decision-making and control of money, and domestic violence within couple relationships.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to evaluate how equal couples are: who does the housework and childcare, who makes decisions and controls money, and the issue of domestic violence, using the march of progress versus feminist debate. Equality means power and money, not just chores.

The symmetrical family debate

Young and Willmott take a march of progress view: families have evolved through stages towards a symmetrical family in which the roles of husband and wife are more similar and shared, as women take paid work and men do more at home. They link this to women's paid employment, smaller families, geographical mobility and higher living standards.

Oakley rejects this as a myth. Her own research found Young and Willmott had set a low bar (a husband counted as "helping" if he did one household task a week). She found that even when women worked, they still did the bulk of housework and childcare, so the "symmetrical family" exaggerated change.

The dual burden and triple shift

Feminists argue paid work has not freed women at home; it has added to their load.

• Dual burden: women do paid work and the bulk of domestic work, so paid employment is layered on top of unchanged domestic responsibility.
• Triple shift: Duncombe and Marsden add emotion work (managing the family's feelings, "doing the worrying", keeping everyone happy) as a third shift carried mainly by women. Hochschild also studied this emotional labour.

The commercialisation of housework (ready meals, appliances, paid cleaners, Silver and Schor) has eased some tasks, but critics note this mainly helps better-off households and does not change who is responsible.

Money, decisions and domestic violence

• Money: Pahl and Vogler distinguish the allowance system (the man controls income and gives the woman housekeeping) from pooling (shared accounts); even pooling can hide male dominance, since men often have the final say. Money is often a source of inequality, not just a shared resource.
• Decisions: Edgell found men tend to make the important, infrequent decisions (moving house, finances, the car) while women make the frequent, less important ones (food, decor), reflecting unequal power.
• Domestic violence: feminists (Dobash and Dobash, who studied refuges) see it as rooted in patriarchy and male power, often triggered by challenges to male authority. It is widespread but under-reported in official statistics, and the criminal justice system has historically been reluctant to intervene in "the family".

Evaluation

Personal-life and postmodern sociologists argue couples now negotiate roles more freely, and Dunne's study of lesbian households found a more equal sharing of tasks (because there is no gender script), suggesting inequality is about gender, not biology. But most evidence still shows women carrying more of the domestic and emotional load, supporting the feminist view that progress is partial rather than complete.