ABSTRACT
Sociologists of earlier generations proposed that dividing labor between husbands and wives was beneficial, natural, and essential to a functioning society. Emile Durkheim argued that separate marriage roles for men and women created "conjugal solidarity", bringing husbands and wives closer together, and that marriages like these were a model for the different roles people played in a community. In mid-twentieth-century America, functionalists such as Talcott Parsons argued that the greater good of society depended in part on husbands and wives having different roles in families, with women playing an expressive (nurturing) role and men playing an instrumental role (breadwinner). Social theories did not play out well for black wives—or husbands—in the first seven decades of the twentieth century. The balance of power in couples' relationships was entangled with their roles as both workers and parents. While it is normal wives to work for pay in the twenty-first century, norms of gender equality often dissolve when children are added.
