The family and division of labour

Abstract

In my long essay, I conducted a small-scale research study on the history of the family, the challenges that spouses meet in the family and how this changes along the years. The family is an important nucleus that helps to keep a harmonious balance in the society. Therefore decisions taken in the family, like sharing the house chores and the caring of the children will affect the well being of the society itself. In my research and survey I tried to take a look at how the family is dealing with work, house duties and caring responsibilities. For the purpose of the research I decided to use the semi-structured method so that with the qualitative questions I would be able to obtain deep and personal information about the topic and with the closed questions, I would be able to gather more objective day to day information. I interviewed eleven women. The ages were between 31 and 51. All of them work except two who were housewives. All have at least two children. It was not difficult to interview them as most of them showed cooperation and interest. When formulating the questions, I took care that the questions would be structured so that the replies would be more useful. I analyzed the data by first making a transcript and building the general interview and jotting down key words and other important observations. Work is becoming important in the family's life as a means of security or advancement. Therefore there was a mixed feeling regarding whether one should work part time or full time. Very often this depends on the age of the children. Housework is an important part of their lives and has to be done. It generates a sense of harmony and well being. The husbands' role in helping in house chores and caring of children is mixed. On one end there is the patriarchal style, where the husband is the breadwinner and works even two jobs to sustain the family. This kind of man helps in the house chores only when the wife cannot cope due, for example, to illness. Then there is the modern man found in the symmetrical family who is willing to share duties at home, help in the kitchen, with the shopping and the caring of children. Younger spouses tend to be of this type. On the other hand there is still the Ii ne of thought that if a husband helps just a bit in the kitchen, like washing some plates and maybe doing some shopping, this is considered to be quite a good level of help and it would be enough. There is the wish that children should participate more in house chores, while adolescents feel that parents need to spend more time with them instead of spending too much time doing other things. According to the survey there are still mixed types of families with respect to the sharing of house chores, but most agree that if everyone gives a helping hand, harmony and positive energy is generated among the family members.