Assess the view that gender roles and relationships have become more equal in modern life.

Gender roles is being socialised into your gender for example boys are likely to be taught to play with cars whereas girls are likely to be taught to play with dolls. In a relationship these gender roles turn to conjugal roles. Conjugal roles are the parts played by the male and female in a marriage or cohabiting relationship, these conjugal roles can be joint and equal or they can be segregated. Some sociologists would suggest that in modern life, conjugal roles are becoming more equal.
Conjugal roles were studied by two sociologists named young and Wilmot who stated that traditional segregated conjugal roles, which were that partners had very distinctive and separate roles in a household e.g. Men have the instrumental role and work to get money for the family and women are in the expressive role which is where they provide the emotional support, have become more equal and turned into joint conjugal roles which are that the partners roles within a marriage or relationship are mostly shared, which has led to a ‘symmetrical family’. By symmetrical family they mean one in which the roles of husbands and wives are now much more similar, for example women now go out to work although it may be part time instead of fulltime. Young and Willmott found that the symmetrical family was more common in young couples who were geographically and socially isolated. The positive of the symmetrical family is that having women bring a second wage into the home raises the standard of living. However Oakley sees the housewife role as becoming dominant role for married women rather than a move towards symmetry.
Another way to study gender roles is to examine time spent on different tasks. This helps to show whether men or women spend more time on paid and un-paid work. Sociologist Gershuny