‘He earns the bread and butter and I earn the cream’

Abstract

This article explores the relation between job insecurity, male breadwinner ideology and family forms drawing on qualitative, in-depth interviews with women and men working in three organizations in a specific travel-to-work area in South Wales. We argue that a modified form of male breadwinner family is still widespread in this part of Britain, but that the elements that constitute male breadwinner ideology and the male breadwinner family are disrupted by men’s job insecurity. There are few signs of the emergence of a dual breadwinner/dual carer family, although the families of 42 percent of our respondents conformed to a dual earner family form. The only circumstance where men took on more of the care work was in a situation of role reversal as a result of men’s job insecurity and/or job loss and was most evident amongst couples where both were on low incomes with insecure jobs.