There is no doubt that feminist sociology has opened up new topics. If, for example we take the sociology of families and households, there are at least nine ‘new’ topics opened up by feminist sociologists, which aim at unpicking and doing high quality research upon ‘marriage’, ‘family’, ‘household’, and ‘the private’. They provide us with a new angle on marriage and households: the scrutiny of the private. These topics are:
1 Housework
2 Caring
3 Money
4 Domestic violence
5 Food, drink and cooking
6 Childbirth
7 Emotional ‘work’
8 Leisure
9 Control of time
Much of the sociology of the past 25 years has been about the apparently mundane: who pays the rent? Who buys the children’s school shoes? Who empties the kitchen bin? Who cleans up when granny soils herself? Who hits whom? Whose hobbies get time and money, whose get squeezed out? (see McKie et al., 1999).