Middle-Class Couples: A Study of Segregation, Domination and Inequality in Marriage

When this book was originally published in 1980, sociologists had long held the view that the middle-class marriage in contemporary Britain was characterised by role desegregation and marital equality. Middle-Class Couples reported on research which provided a critical re-analysis of this orthodoxy. The book is a theoretically informed, empirical study which largely debunks many of the myths associated with this alleged movement towards ‘equal marriage’ among professional couples. The author analysed the sexual division of labour among a group of professional workers and their wives at the child-rearing stage of their family cycle. The research paid special attention to the notion of marital equality and the power dimension of marriage, the household division of labour and the patterning of leisure between husbands and wives. A radical critique of the existing social theories of the family and society incorporated in the classic studies of Parsons, Watson, Young and Willmott, Ann Oakley and Elizabeth Bott.