marriage remains a patriarchal institution

Assess the view that marriage remains a patriarchal institution.

What is the family? As the American anthropologist George Peter Murdock said,families share the same household,work together and to some extent,they share the same domestic tasks and income. Besides,symmetrical family,which came in 1973 announced by Michael Young and Peter Willmott that the roles of husband and wife were becoming more and more similar. However,it didn't come true in fact in a lot of societies.
According to Ann Oakley's research conducted in the early 1970s with interviews of 40 women,we can see a clear division of domestic labour that women still play a major role in housework,childrencare and spend more time than men.As a result,most
working wives have a dual burden that referred by Allan and Crow. Next,as for the emotion work which includes love,understanding,attention in maintaining relationships,a study by Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden also shows that men showes little awareness of their shortcoming and are always arrogant.In addition,we should concentrate on the family finances.If we observe our old generation like grandparents carefully,we easily find that grandfathers are always dominant by asking grandmothers to do this or that and control the money.This kind of situation is proved by Carolyn Vogler and Jan Pahl that whatever money management system was,men tended to get more money.At last,what i want to say is about the power in the family.We can just take an example from decision-making.Based on a study by Stephen Edgell,decisions made by female were always less important than male's.
Therefore,we can know that patriarcal families have been existing for a long time that it is not easy to change and are common in alot of societies.Although this dominant situation has got better now,with an increasing number of wives choose to be independent by getting jobs,more husbands help to do the housework, and even alpha earners appear, marriages remain a patriarchal institution still exist in some places.All i want to say is that female and wives should change,confirm their attitudes and be confident.I believe that the symmetrical relationship will come into reality soon!