4.2.2 - Power Relationships within the Family

Decision-making and resources

Sociologists treat power within the family as the ability to shape outcomes. That means we need to look beyond whether couples say they decide things "together" and ask a harder question: whose preferences usually carry most weight when the decision really matters?

Edgell studied professional couples and found a hierarchy of decision-making. Men tended to dominate very important decisions such as finance, housing and major purchases, while women were more likely to make less significant decisions such as food, decor, or children's clothing. This matters because it shows that apparent participation is not the same thing as equal power. If women choose the curtains but men shape housing, debt and major spending, the balance of power remains unequal.

Hardill et al. found something similar in dual-earner households. Even where both partners had careers, the man's job was more likely to determine where the family lived and whose promotion or transfer took priority. In other words, power is often built into family biographies: one partner's career becomes the fixed point around which everyone else adjusts.

Control over money also matters because money is not just income; it is command over choices. Pahl and later Vogler showed that families use different systems of money management, but these systems do not automatically produce equality.

A key sociological point is that women may manage day-to-day budgeting without controlling the family's overall resources. In low-income households, women are also more likely to "go without" in order to protect children or partners from hardship. That is responsibility without equal power. Vogler's later survey work also found that joint or partial pooling had become more common, but this did not remove the possibility that one partner, often the higher earner, still had more influence over major financial choices.

Domestic violence and coercive control

Power within the family becomes most visible when it turns into coercion or violence. This is why sociologists talk about the dark side of the family: the idea that family life can involve fear, intimidation, abuse and exploitation as well as care and support.

Victim surveys consistently show that domestic abuse is widespread rather than marginal, and they usually uncover more cases than police records because many incidents are never reported. That matters sociologically because under-reporting can make the family look safer than it really is. The pattern is also gendered. Men can be victims, but women are much more likely to experience repeated, coercive, and physically damaging abuse. This is why feminist sociologists treat domestic violence as a power issue rather than as a few isolated arguments that got out of hand.

Police records and victim surveys measure different units: recorded incidents or offences are not the same as the proportion of people reporting victimisation. Repeated abuse can produce several incidents involving one victim. Comparisons therefore need a shared definition, period and population, as well as attention to under-reporting.

Domestic abuse is not just about assault. It can include monitoring a partner's phone, restricting contact with friends, controlling transport, humiliating someone in front of children, or preventing access to money. Stark uses the idea of coercive control to show that power in abusive relationships is often continuous and patterned rather than a series of isolated incidents.

Dobash and Dobash give the classic radical feminist explanation. They argue that domestic violence should not be treated as an individual pathology or a few "bad men" acting outside the normal family. Instead, it reflects patriarchy: men using violence and intimidation to enforce authority when they believe their power is being challenged. This is why feminist sociology treats domestic violence as a structural issue linked to wider gender inequality.

Wilkinson and Pickett add a structural layer by arguing that violence tends to be higher in more unequal societies, where poverty, shame, and chronic stress intensify frustration and conflict. This does not replace the feminist explanation, because inequality alone cannot explain why abuse is so often directed by men against women. It does, however, show how class inequality can intensify the conditions in which patriarchal control becomes especially dangerous.