Write short note: Impact of changes in sex roles on family. (1996)
Sex roles, now usually called gender roles, are the expectations a society attaches to men and women. Since the mid-twentieth century, several forces have loosened the model of the male breadwinner and female homemaker: women’s education and employment, control over fertility, feminist movements and laws on equality. Because the family was organised around that division, changes in sex roles have reshaped its power structure, functions, form and stability.
Impact on the family
- Conjugal power. Robert Blood and Donald Wolfe (Husbands and Wives, 1960) proposed resource theory: a spouse’s say in decisions rises with the income and education she brings. NFHS-6 (2023–24) found 89% of married Indian women taking part in key household decisions.
- Division of labour. Elizabeth Bott (Family and Social Network, 1957) described a shift from segregated to joint conjugal roles. Michael Young and Peter Willmott (1973) called the result the symmetrical family. Arlie Hochschild (The Second Shift, 1989) found instead a dual burden on employed wives. India’s Time Use Survey 2024 records women spending 289 minutes a day on unpaid domestic work, while men spend 88.
- Family size and timing. Women’s education and careers delay marriage and childbearing and shrink families. India’s TFR has fallen to 2.0 (NFHS-6), below replacement.
- Marital stability. Economic independence makes exit from unhappy marriages possible, and higher expectations of companionship raise the bar for a satisfying marriage. William J. Goode linked both to rising divorce.
- Parenting and socialisation. Involved fatherhood grows, while childcare moves to crèches, grandparents and paid domestic workers. This creates a care chain in which poorer women do the housework of richer ones.
- New family forms. Dual-career couples, voluntary childlessness, cohabitation, single mothers by choice and commuter marriages multiply.
- Care of the elderly. Fewer full-time homemakers means a care deficit for ageing parents. India’s Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007 is partly a response.
- Role strain and conflict. Wives may face tension between work and home roles. Promilla Kapur (Marriage and the Working Woman in India, 1970) found maladjustment where husbands held traditional expectations. Where men feel their status threatened, backlash can take the form of domestic violence.
Perspectives
- Functionalist and New Right: blurred sex roles cause role confusion, weaken socialisation and destabilise the family.
- Liberal feminist and late-modern: Anthony Giddens (The Transformation of Intimacy, 1992) sees a democratisation of intimacy, a more equal, negotiated partnership.
- Radical and dual-systems feminist: Sylvia Walby (Theorizing Patriarchy, 1990) argues that patriarchy shifts from private to public forms rather than ending. Ann Oakley shows that “helping” with housework is not sharing it.
- Indian context: change is filtered through caste, class and kinship. Female labour-force participation is 41.7% (PLFS 2023–24), and much of it is unpaid family work. Joint-family support often absorbs the strain of women’s employment.
Conclusion
Changing sex roles have made the family smaller, more companionate and more negotiated, but also more fragile and more stretched for care. The family has not collapsed. It is being renegotiated, and the unfinished revolution in men’s domestic roles will decide whether the outcome is equality or a double burden for women.