Domestic division of labour refers to how household and childcare tasks are shared between the adult partners in a household. Traditionally, males were seen as the breadwinner, while the responsibility for housework, cooking and looking after the children was seen as ‘women’s work’. Bott referred to this type of arrangement as ‘segregated conjugal roles’. When household tasks became more evenly shared between couples, this was referred to as ‘joint conjugal roles’.
The degree of financial contribution to the family by each partner and the way in which domestic and childcare tasks are shared reflects not only important changes in work (e.g. with more married/cohabiting women and mothers in the workforce) but also our views on the roles and status of men and women within the family. Marxists, feminists and functionalists all have views regarding the reasons for different patterns of domestic labour within the family.
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