ABSTRACT
In consequence of the conjugal family assuming a more ‘companionate’ or partnership-like form, relations between parents and children would seem likely to become closer and more inherently rewarding. Goldthorpe and Lockwood conclude thatprimacy was clearly given to the material well-being, the social cohesiveness and the autonomy of the conjugal family over and against the demands or attractions of wider kinship or community ties; and one could at least suggest that probably the one most important concomitant of this changed emphasis was the acceptance among these workers and their wives of the ideal of the ‘companionate’ marriage. The sexual division of labour produces inequality in marriage, therefore, and this inequality is legitimated by gender ideologies which Edgell sees as a reflection of ‘the structure of work and family roles and their interrelationship’. The most original type of data that Edgell’s study provides is data on the normative compliance of the spouses in his sample with a highly traditional marital-role ideology.
