... pivotal to the process of the creation and maintenance of family life, each stems from very different understandings as to how gender relations are constituted. It will therefore be necessary to examine the theoretical assumptions underlying these approaches, together with a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of each, drawing on the critiques put forward by a number of writers from both within and outside of these perspectives. However, before this can be done an outline of each approach is required, with particular regard to the significance of gender and gender relations. At its most basic, the social psychological / sociological approach argues that any account of family life must be understood within the wider social, economic and political context of the external world. Within this social context, concepts such as roles, the sexual division of labour, and power, all to some extent determined by the dominant ideology of the ...

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