The question of whether women’s involvement in waged work leads to an increased sense of independence, as well as improved decisionmaking roles in the household and changes in conjugal role expectations, is impossible to answer in comparative perspective. The empirical findings have been mixed, and it is difficult to know, for example, whether women divorce because they have the ability to be self-supporting or whether they enter the labour market when they recognize that their marriage is unsatisfactory. Recent data from Thailand, where women have a long history of employment and where the divorce rate is low but showing a modest rise, suggest that what little effect employment has is mediated by a whole set of factors relating to marital problems, wife abuse and poor relations between spouses. The picture is further complicated by the fact that 25 per cent of families in Bangkok are extended, and hence women may have help with domestic duties and child care. Some women keep a shop at home or are craft workers and they can therefore integrate domestic and productive work more readily. The study concludes, however, by pointing out that, although work might allow women to leave an unsatisfactory marriage, it certainly does not cause divorce (Edwards et al. 1992).
Divorce rates are on the rise in many countries of the world, but it is worth noting that this pattern is not a uniform one and that in many countries women are unable to divorce. There are also marked differences between rural and urban areas, and between individuals of different classes, religions and ethnic groups. The available data suggest that women suffer a significant loss of income at divorce, with reductions of 30-70 per cent from pre-divorce family income, while men’s income tends to increase because they are no longer supporting dependants (Weitzman 1985, and see the discussion of Lloyd’s and Gage-Brandon’s material above). The result is that divorce and marital disruption have very different consequences for women and for men. The reasons for increasing divorce rates have to be specified culturally and historically, and no single generalization could cover all the kinship and marital systems of the world. However, a number of critics have asserted that rising divorce rates are related to changing roles and expectations, and that, among many factors, increasing female participation in the labour force, greater mobility and modernization are to blame. These arguments are difficult to assess—especially in comparative perspective—because they are often based on assumptions about the negative effects of social change on what are thought to be key social relations and cultural values. What is evident is that critics frequently approach the problem of changing roles and expectations within marriages and families from an individual as opposed to structural perspective.
Recent research in the South African homeland of Qwaqwa has produced evidence of high rates of premarital pregnancies, conjugal conflict and marital dissolution, accompanied by poor socialization of young males and rising levels of crime (Niehaus 1994; Sharpe 1994; Banks 1994; Moore 1994a). The reasons for this situation are a decline in male migrant labour and male employment generally, increasing social differentiation within the community and the relocation of industries (clothing, glass and electronics) into the area to take advantage of cheap female labour and other incentives. The consequence of these changes is that household reproduction is more dependent on female income from beer brewing, petty trade and waged labour. Women report their husbands as saying that beer brewing is not an appropriate activity for respectable married women, and that domestic tasks and child care are being neglected as a result of women working. Conjugal conflict over income and household decision making has been greatly exacerbated as men transfer their anxieties about the loss of their jobs and their declining contribution to household resources into the domestic domain. Women find themselves increasingly in the position of not being able to support the family on a male wage and they continue to look for ways to generate income. There have been a number of violent clashes in the homeland where men have protested against the provision of jobs for women in the new industries at their expense as they see it. Conjugal roles and expectations are being forced to change, as women provide more of the income while partners are unemployed. Child care, especially for women with young children, has become a crucial issue. The definitions of a ‘good wife’ and a ‘good husband’ are altering, and one result is that people’s personal relationships are under enormous pressure.
The forms and structures of families and households are responding to these changes in a number of ways. The dependency ratios of adult income earners to children are a clear determinant of household security among low-income households, and consequently extended households made up of three generations or co-resident siblings are emerging. Increasing numbers of women are refusing to marry because marriage provides little security for them and their children, while increasing their vulnerability through the demands that husbands can make on wives’ labour, time and income. More and more men are leaving the area and not returning because they cannot support their families. Young men are refusing to marry and/or to acknowledge paternity because they do not have the resources, and are not sure that they will ever have the resources, to enter into family commitments. As mentioned earlier, marriage in this kind of situation becomes a net drain on men’s resources and this is one factor involved in the increasing numbers of absent fathers and unmarried teenage mothers.
Under conditions of extreme economic and social pressure, it becomes apparent that women’s and men’s interests do not converge but rather diverge. The needs, rights and obligations on which the conjugal contract depends can no longer be mutually constructed. This should not, however, be taken as straightforward evidence of the breakdown or dissolution of the family. Co-residence of adult, unmarried siblings was noted by Niehaus (1994), who reported sisters who went out to work and had their children looked after by their brothers. Family ties between generations were strong and a number of residential arrangements involving grandparents and grandchildren and multi-generational households were noted. Family ties of a broader kind were actually essential for establishing wider networks and residential arrangements that would allow households to secure access to income and to nurture the young. In the past, many analysts have failed to recognize this point because they have been implicitly comparing such family arrangements with the conjugal, nuclear family, and have thus found them wanting.
The question of crime, especially among young males, is clearly related to the high levels of unemployment and to the impossibility of establishing adult status in a situation where you can neither marry nor work. The need for an income in order to be able to consume and survive is what draws some men into co-residence with their sisters and others into illegal methods of income generation. There are no incentives for young men and very few opportunities for creating a positive sense of self. It is not so much that fathers are absent and have no authority, thus providing defective role models, but rather that the whole structure of masculine identity is in doubt. This may in turn provide further impetus for involvement in illegal activities that bring their own form of status, recognition and identity. The problem of unsocialized youth is but one part of a larger problem about the care and nurturing of the young.