Solidarity and Individualism in the Gender Relations – the Dilemma of the Power Relations within the Contemporary Couple

Abstract

The general idea regarding the relations between the contemporary marital partners describes the marital relations through a fair and modern attitude. Thus, the idea of marital modernity seems already certain and well assimilated in most marital environments. However, the national statistical data do not validate the same balance in terms of marital role equity, the relationships between partners or in terms of the distribution of power within the couple. The culture in which the young people have grown has a greater influence upon them than the glitter of the new values of equity and marital balance. In the 2000 Gender Barometer, 63% of the respondents believed it was a woman's duty to take care of the household chores, while in 2018, their share was 58%. We can therefore speak of a modernity of mentalities, but a very slow one, as in almost 2 decades, the general evolution in terms of role equity is only 5% and regarding the superior ability of the man to lead the family, the indicators note an evolution of 9.8%. (Grünberg, 2019).

The contemporaneity surprises the young couple at the intersection between the traditional system and the modern system or at the intersection between the marital modernity and the postmodernity; in both situations, the strategy of managing the solidarity and the access to power is a priority.

The study starts from the premise of the fact that the new valences of the marital modernity managed to produce obvious changes in the declared behavior rather than in the actually played behavior.