His Unemployment, Her Problem: the Domestic and Marital Consequences of Male Unemployment

Abstract

We, sociologists that is, have been criticised for not being where the action is. We have been seen as failing to exercise our sociological imaginations. The vital Millsian link between private troubles and public issues (Mills, 1959), never very strong in British Sociology, has been notably tenuous in recent years. Until recently, remarkably little sociological attention has been given to the large number of unemployed people (is it three or four million?) in contemporary Britain. Detailed work to understand their private troubles has hardly begun. There has though been some response from the sociological community and at the same time an understandable impatience to know precisely ‘how unemployment affects people’ (Harris, 1984). Harris asked that question with increasing irritability and exasperation as he discovered that we – sociologists that is – don’t really know. He asked, ‘what has been the effect of unemployment on family life, on divorce, on child abuse? No one seemed to know exactly. What was the effect of parental unemployment on children’s work at school and on truancy? Has unemployment encouraged many people to move or emigrate? Where were the definitive figures on delinquency and crime, race and religion? An embarrassing silence’ (Harris, 1984, p. 88).