12.2.2: The Conflict/Feminist Perspective:

 12.2.2: The Conflict/Feminist Perspective: Shifting Power Conflict and feminist theorists stress that marriage and family roles reflect the basic social inequality that runs through society. Male Domination of Marriage and Family Historically, women have served men as wife, sister, and mother. The wife was expected to prepare her husband’s food, to take care of his clothing, and to satisfy his sexual and emotional needs. The woman’s life was expected to revolve around her home, including the care of the children. This backstage work is called reproductive labor—the work that a wife performs behind the scenes that allows her breadwinner husband to flourish in his more public life. Deciding who a daughter or son would marry was a father’s right and responsibility. To forge alliances, kings would arrange for their daughters to marry the sons of other kings. Members of the nobility would do the same, arranging for their children to marry “suitably,” which meant that the marriage would provide an advantage for the father’s lineage. Over time, fathers in the West gradually lost this right. Although arranged marriages are no longer part of our current marital customs, the traditional wedding ceremony reflects this lost right. At many weddings, the mother sits passively to the side as the father walks his daughter down the aisle and “gives” her to her husband. This is but a pale reflection of the power that men have wielded historically, but it is a reflection nonetheless. Both custom and the law once allowed men to discipline not only their children but also their wives. Not too far in our own past, a husband could spank his wife—if she “needed” it. Beating a wife was considered permissible if she became rebellious or had an affair. In some areas—such as Pakistan—husbands are still permitted to beat their wives as a form of discipline. “Honor killings,” which we reviewed in Chapter 10, are the ultimate sanction that men can give women for violating the rules by which they control them. Marriage as an Arena for an Ongoing Historical Struggle Industrialization brought major change to husband–wife relationships. As more and more women took paid jobs, their experiences at work changed their views of the world. Increasingly, wives came to resent arrangements that women at earlier periods had taken for granted. Housework and child care (or as sociologists put it, the division of labor at home) became a pivotal source of conflict. Women started chafing—and complaining—that it was unfair for them to work at jobs outside the home and to shoulder almost all the housework and child care. The husbands resented this accusation, pointing out how many more hours they were putting in at work. Gradually, husbands accepted more responsibility for housework and child care, although this part of the family’s division of labor still falls primarily on women’s shoulders. Husbands and wives still struggle to achieve a satisfying balance of work, child care, and housework, the root of many of today’s marital problems. Today’s wives are considerably less dependent on their husbands for financial security. With their greater independence, wives are less willing to put up with relationships that they don’t find fulfilling. Conflict and feminist theorists view the high divorce rate not as a sign that the family has grown weaker, but as evidence that women have made headway in their millennia-old struggle with men. Husbands and wives however, don’t view their conflicts through this historical lens. They don’t see their marital problems as part of some flowing tide of history. Rather, they experience direct, personal troubles with their spouse, which they generally attribute to failings within their personal relationship.