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Tony Blair's uncritical
commitment to 'the two parent family' and the 'community' is strangely
reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher's famous statement that there is no
such thing as society; only
individuals and families. The labour party has joined with conservatives
to heap all the ills of society on the breakdown of the nuclear family.
Rising crime figures among young men are attributed to lone parents
rather than factors such as unemployment, materialism and the assertion
and celebration of 'macho' masculinity. But the problem young men face
in the face in the context of rising and,
for some, permanent unemployment and the consequent loss of their
breadwinner role in the family is rarely addressed.
There is no doubt that the family is in
flux. Marriage has declined in popularity and most couples now cohabit
before getting married. Divorce
has increased six fold over the past thirty years, a higher increase
than in any other European country -
and over a third of marriages now end in divorce. In London where
I interviewed a hundred teenage girls in the early 1980's, almost half
were no longer living with both parents. Yet little attempt is made to
explain why it is that over 70% of divorce petitions are taken out by
women or why it is women, who
carry the main burden of parenting, even when they are the sole
breadwinner in intact families.
The family may be under strain but there is
no evidence that women are abandoning their children. So why is it that
divorce is on the increase? Could it be that
the nuclear family for all its strengths embodies the fundamental
weakness of resting on women's subordination and it is for this reason
that women are choosing economic hardship rather than staying with the
father.
Some light is thrown on this issue by
looking at the opinions of young men and women.
Girls I interviewed in the early 1980's saw marriage as
inevitable as I described in my book Sugar
and Spice: Sexuality and Adolescent Girls (Penguin 1993) but they also wanted to put it off as long as possible. 'I
do not want to get married until I've had my
life' commented Marrianne, a comment which was typical of the
unromantic realism about marriage.
Overall the girls view of marriage was not romantic, but seemed
to be realistically based on the observations of their parents and the
parents of their friends and acquaintances. They described it as a
domestic burden that carried little in the way of reward, accompanied by
financial dependency that was both a constriction on the mother and a
bone of contention between husband and wife 'My dad won't give in. My
mum she sort of goes short now and again and she asks him for extra
money and he just won't give it to her. I think other families are like
that. If you don't have to rely on a man, they don't feel so tight with
their money'.
Girls were also aware that their mothers
often suffer treatment from their husbands which no employer would get
away with.
'My dad thinks she should be a total wife/mother image be
there ready and waiting. The meal should be ready and if he clicks his
fingers she should go running'. Several girls had experienced male
violence in their home and described the boy they would marry as
'someone who would not beat them up'.
Many girls recognised that the
marriages around them were based on inequality, organised around the
unpaid and often unacknowledged labour of women. The most important
reason girls put forward for marriage was that they saw no realistic
alternative.
More recent research into the attitudes of
young men and women to marriage and family life reflect this realism.
Sue Sharpe in her 1994 updated version of the best selling book 'Just
like a Girl' first published in 1976, returned to the four schools
where she had interviewed fifteen year old girls then and compared them
with girls to-day. The most remarkable change she found related to the
girls changed views of marriage which had dramatically dropped in
popularity. Over three quarters of the girls she interviewed had said
yes to marriage in 1972 compared to under half in 1991. Most girls did
not want to get married but
saw it as something to be
approached with extreme caution.
With Mike O'Donnell, she explored the
attitudes, ideas and expectations of marriage and family life of 15 to
16 year old boys. Boys attitudes had changed far less. In contrast to
the girls, three quarters
of the boys simply assumed that
marriage would be part of their future life. Boys saw marriage as an
important way of committing themselves to another person. As Ian said
'For myself I think marriage is pretty important and the father and
mother have to be there for the child. I'd live with them and then I'd
feel as you get older that marriage is the official statement of your
love like, so I'd get married eventually'.
Few of the girls agreed. Girls realism
about marriage seemed to have permeated other attitudes to the future.
More believed you could not expect people to stay with the same partner
for life, whereas boys were more optimistic. Whereas half the boys felt
that parents should stay together for the sake of their children, almost
all the girls disagreed. Asked how likely they thought it was they
would get divorced or separated one day few
boys thought this likely compared to nearly half the girls.
Most of the boys thought men should be more
involved with looking after children, and that men were just as able to
look after a home and children as women. Daniel was an exception.
'I
think you should have an equal partnership and share (caring for)
children and all the chores. Just because you're a man doesn't mean you
have to go out and be a breadwinner. If the man feels between at home he
could discuss it with his wife. You can't take it for granted that if
he's male then he's going to want to do that and because she's female
she's not going to mind doing it.
Most boys
were however not keen on the idea of equality.
There is a solid band of resistance, typified in the attitudes of
boys like Tony:
I suppose you have to share it (at home), but I'd let the woman
do most of the work because I can't really see me doing ironing and
hoovering up. I think it's a woman's job. I'd like to put shelves up,
fix a car, fix the fringe, washing machine. It might have changed for
some people but if you ask the boys around her they say, well let the
woman do it. If you asked the girls they'd probably say 'I'll let them
do half and let me do half, but I wouldn't do that. I'd just say 'You do
that and I'll do something else'. women always used to stay at home and
look after the kids and now it's changed and a lot of men stay home and
the women go to work which is a good change. But most men wouldn't do it
- I wouldn't like to do it anyway, I'd be bored at home.
Men who help with the housework, seen as
women's work, run the risk of being labelled as wimps. Yet they are
given no help in confronting the contradictions in masculine images and
roles. The widening discrepancies between their own ideas and
expectations and those of young women they hope to marry, does not bode
well for the future of the two parent nuclear family. Sam failed to see
how the change in girls attitudes would affect him when he commented
'Sometimes feminism and women's equality is a load of rubbish,
but mostly it's just important for women. It's their choice really, what
they do with their lives. Men have got a little bit to do with it but
not much'. In the past
marriage has offered men advantages without the restriction on freedom
and financial dependency which subordination which has been embedded in
the marriage licence which has been referred to by one American male
academic as a 'hitting licence'.
If the political parties were serious about
supporting the family, they need to address the
problems of young men and how to educate them to share in the
skilled role of parenting, a role which contrary to right wing ideology,
they have taken little part in. They need to be aware that
young women of to-day are more assertive and less prepared to
take a subordinate role than in the past and to help boys to change to
fit in with the more reciprocal model of family life.
Political
parties also need to address the problem of how crime among young men is
intrinsically bound up with masculine identity and masculine status
rather than lack of a father role model.
Delinquent and criminal behaviour can be seen as one way of young
men enhancing their masculine status at a time of rising levels of
unemployment. A major
factor in this rise has been the removal of unskilled labouring jobs
which were the form of entry of young men of the lower working class
into the labour force. For many boys this change represents not simply a
move to less stable employment, it means moving to no employment. The
old rituals of transition from youth to adulthood marked by leaving
school, first employment, joining a stable male work culture, assisted
by older workers - some of whom might be uncles and fathers -
integrating into the union, getting married, saving for a first house or
flat, have not been replaced by new ones. They have simply been thrown
into crisis by the break in the transition from education to work.
Integration has been replaced by marginalisation, ambition by
frustration.
The
sense of frustration created by high levels of unemployment, is
heightened by the mass media, which celebrates for male youth, glamour
wielded to the status symbols of affluence, the trainers, video
recorders, leather jackets, motor bikes and cars, all beyond the reach
of many young men with no money and no future, and at the same time the
lack of any sense of being part of a whole community suffering
collectively as was the case during the depression or the interwar
years. Instead in films and videos, young men are presented as violent
and are encouraged to emulate toughness, coolness, physical strength,
and sexual prowess.
Despite efforts to the contrary schools
continue to reproduce traditional gender roles. The 1992 HMI report
concluded that 'boys
schools did not take sufficient account of the implications for the
curriculum... of a world where domestic and paid employment roles of men
and women are changing. Sexism
is alive and flourishing in
most schools and little is being done to educate boys into a new role.
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