Relationships in Great Britain
Here we attempt to describe love relationships in Great Britain. What are men’s and women’s roles in a relationship, what are their beliefs about money and their styles of communication?
Over the last half century, women’s and men’s gender roles in Great Britain have changed significantly in a number of aspects. This is particularly so in patterns of childbearing and women’s participation in the paid labor market. Before the 1970s, most family researchers accepted that wives would do the housework and childcare and husbands would limit their family contributions to being a good provider.
The patterns of marriage and cohabitation nowadays have changed. Gender roles are very apparent with respect to paid employment and one of the most striking trends in the UK is the continuing decline of the traditional family model of male breadwinner and dependent wife and the rise of the two-earner family. Many women expect to be employed, even if their husbands could afford to support the family on their salaries.
British Women Attitude To Work
The female employment rate in UK stood at 72% in 1999 (Aassve and Burgess 2004:1). The majority of women work outside the home before and after having children, regardless of marital status (Storry 2007:123). According to research “Employment Patterns of British Families in 2001. Family Change 1999 to 2001”, conducted by Alan Marsh and Jane Perry, more than half (54 per cent) of mothers work full-time (16 or more hours a week), including 42 per cent of mothers with children under five. Overall, about 70 percent of married mothers are economically active, but this varies significantly with the age of the children; 58 percent of women with a youngest child of preschool age (under five) are employed compared with 78 percent of mothers with a youngest child over ten (Marsh and Perry 2003). Part-time work (under thirty hours) is very common, with about two-fifths of mothers in part-time jobs.
The research, conducted in 2002 by Gray and Gillian, investigated people’s perceptions and attitudes of what women want, the division of labor within the home, and attitudes to work and family. According to this survey, 44% of women compared to 31% of men are more likely to disagree or strongly disagree with the perception that “what women really want is a home and children”. 70% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that both the man and woman should contribute to the household income (Gray and Gillian 2002).
The most striking aspect of these women’s accounts is their commitment to their jobs. They explained it with an importance for personal self-esteem and an opportunity to exercise authority (Lewis 2001:152).
Attitude to Money in the UK
Research conducted in Great Britain by Vogler and Pahl (1999:133) identified five basic systems of financial management in marriages:
1. The whole wage system, whereby either the man hands over his wage and the wife is responsible for all the finances of the household or the husband has sole responsibility for managing all household finances.
2. The allowance system, whereby the man gives the wife a housekeeping allowance and pays other bills himself.
3. The shared management (a common pool), whereby both have access to income and expenditure comes from a shared pool (although the pool may be managed jointly or by one of the partners).
4. The shared management (a partial pool), whereby personal spending money comes from funds retained by each partner.
5. The independent management system, whereby each partner has separate responsibilities and neither partner has access to all funds.
The first and second systems are characteristics of male-breadwinner family patterns and are less represented in Britain. Women typically managed the money in low-income households and this situation was seen as a chore by women, rather than a source of power. In households with higher incomes or in families where women were economically inactive, husbands were likely to control finances; typically, wives were given a housekeeping allowance. The higher the income levels, the greater the equality of sharing, state Vogler and Pahl (1999:131). According to Bacs Consumer Payments Survey 2008, Britons are wealthier in terms of income levels then ever before. However, they are becoming more cautious about how they spend their money (Bacs Consumer Payments Survey 2008). Three quarters of respondents said they pride themselves on being careful with money. An almost equal number – 72% – said they did not agree that they often found themselves over-committed financially. And more than nine out of ten respondents said that they liked to know where they stood financially, while 87% agreed they usually knew how much they had in their current account (Bacs Consumer Payments Survey 2006 – 2007).
Younger couples from the UK in Vogler and Pahl’s research, operated on mixed financial systems which often involved a number of different accounts. One-fifth of those interviewed were operating on a joint pool system. Most couples, though, proved to have separate bank accounts and paying each for particular household expenses (Lewis 2001:165).
