1. Egalitarian Relationships: Desire vs. Reality Jonelle McGee Sociology 235: Gender Roles Professor Erica Dixon South Puget Sound Community College August 2010
2. Introduction Ever since having kids, I have taken a real hard look at the dynamics of my own relationship to see what kind of behavior we are modeling for our children. My husband and I have an egalitarian marriage, and our children are seeing that both mommy and daddy work, share household responsibilities and equally take care of and spend time with them. I picked this topic as I was interested to see if a person’s desire for this type of relationship actually is or becomes a reality for them.
3. The Traditional Relationship Patriarchal based marriages, as seen in the 1950’s (Kimmel, 2009), with the husband being the sole breadwinner and the happy wife staying at home cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. The Egalitarian Relationship This marriage offers equal opportunity for either or both partners to work, divides up household chores, shares the responsibility of raising the children, and has equal say in money issues and in all other realms of the marriage (Parker-Pope, 2010).
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5. Hypothesis My hypothesis is that the majority of people I survey will express a desire for an egalitarian relationship. I also propose that in reality, less than 50% of my survey participants will actually be a part of that egalitarian relationship they so desire.
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7. Results Desire Eight people expressed a desire for egalitarian relationship and eight for traditional when their relationships began. The spouse echoed the marital desire 57% of the time, while the other 43% have never discussed the issue. Reality All eight of the traditional desired marriage participants said they are living the reality of a traditional marriage. Of the eight survey takers who chose egalitarian as their desired relationship type, four of them felt they do have an egalitarian marriage, three said they somewhat have it, and one said no.
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9. Results (cont.) For the division of labor section of the survey, women performed more hours of both inside chores and childcare, while men performed more hours of outside chores and paid work (see Table 1).
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11. Conclusion (cont.) Limitations of Study The number of participants was very small and there were many more women than men. If I were to repeat this study, a larger and broader participant base would be needed, with a more equal division of females to males. Final Thoughts The study left me thinking about our social policy in regards to family support. I wonder if it were better, would more people desire an egalitarian relationship? I also was questioning the results of the low “paid work” results for the women in my study- are they due to bad economy, personal choice, or are those numbers maybe not an accurate representation due to the small number of people surveyed.
12. References Gerson, K. (2007, February 19). What Do Women and Men Want? The American Prospect . Retrieved August 2, 2010, from http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_do_women_and_men_want Greenstein, T. (1996). Gender Ideology and Perceptions of the Fairness of the Division of Household Labor: Effects on Marital Quality. Social Forces: The University of North Carolina Press , 74 (3), 1029-1042. Retrieved July 27, 2010, from the EBSCO database. Kimmel, M. (2009). The Gendered Society (4 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press, USA. Parker-Pope, T. "She Works. They're Happy." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. 22 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 July 2010. <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/fashion/24marriage.html>. Rost, H. (2002). Where are the New Fathers? German Families with a Non-Traditional Distribution of Professional and Family Work. Community, Work & Family , 5 (3), 371-376. Retrieved July 27, 2010, from the EBSCO database. Wiesmann, S., Boeije, H., Doorne-Huiskes, A. v., & Dulk, L. d. (2008). "Not Worth Mentioning": The Implicit and Explicit Nature of Decision-Making about the Division of Paid and Domestic Work. Community, Work & Family , 11 (4), 341- 363. Retrieved July 27, 2010, from the EBSCO database. Yodanis, C. (2003). International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family (2 ed.). New York: Macmillan Reference Books. From her article "Power: Marital Relationships" contained in this reference book. Photo Credits: Slide #1: http://www.spirituscounseling.com/image-files/couples-counseling-boulder-01.jpg Slide #2: http://www.jayreillyweddings.com/publish/_assets/wedding046-1-ddb17f.jpg http://i.bnet.com/blogs/family-beach.jpg Slide #3: http://krystlewebb.efoliomn.com/uploads/traditional_thumb.jpg http://www.momlogic.com/images/mom-leaving-for-work-250.jpg Slide #5: http://family.go.com/images/cms/parenting/featured/pg14-cooking-family-240-j-5022658.jpg
