Family & Social Policy

Social policy refers to the plans and actions of state agencies such as health and social services, the welfare benefits system, schools and other bodies
1. Policies are usually based on laws introduced by governments to provide the framework within which these agencies operate e.g laws say who is entitled to benefits
Cross-Cultural Social Policies
1. China’s One Child Policy (1978-2015)- with the population so high, they discouraged members of society to have more than one child and they gave benefits to families with only one child whilst cutting down benefits of families with more than one child
2. Communist Romania's Family Policy (1980s)- series of policies to try to drive up the birth rate which would be falling as living standards declined- restricted contraception and abortion, setup fertility treatment centres, made divorce more difficult, lowered the legal age of marriage to 15, and made unmarried adults and childless couples pay an extra 5% income tax
3. European Union
  1. Eileen Drew (1995)- EU is moving away from familistic gender regimes and more to individualistic gender regimes
  2. Familistic Gender Regimes- where the state supports traditional families and assumes that the man went out to work and the woman was the housekeeper and child carer
  3. Individualistic Gender Regimes- where each partner in the marriage or relationship is treated equally and welfare benefits apply to both
4. Russian Order of Parental Glory (1917-1930s)- an award given to the largest families in the country- lots of children and rises the birth rate
Familial Ideology
1. Ideology- ideas that are used to justify how things are and thus maintain the status quo
2. Too many single parent families will lead to a crisis in society
3. Families are natural
4. Family life is normal
5. Families should have opposite sex parents
6. Women should care for children
7. The nuclear family is best
8. Promoted by politicians, the media, religious institutions, the medical profession and social services, asserting the message about what family type society should deem as “normal” or “ideal”
Functionlist Perspective
1. Fletcher- government policies benefit the family as it helps all members of the family perform its functions
  1. NHS- supports reproduction in families
  2. State education- supports primary socialisation
2. Evaluation
  1. Marxists- policies can also turn the clock back and reverse progress previously made
  2. Feminists- policies benefit men at the expense of women
Donzelot- policing the family
1. Professionals carry out surveillance through observing and monitoring families, arguing that social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families
2. Poorer families have a higher likely to be seen as the "problem" and the cause of crime & antisocial behaviour
  1. Professionals target them for "improvement"
3. Condry- the state controls family by imposing compulsory Parenting Orders through the courts
  1. Parents of younger offenders, or badly behaved kids are forced to attend parenting classes
4. Evaluation
  1. Marxists- social policies generally operate in the interests of the capitalist class
  2. Feminists- men are the main beneficiaries
The New Right Perspective
1. Brenda Almond- several policies have undermined the nuclear family
  1. Divorce laws make it easier to undermine the idea of marriage and lifelong commitment
  2. Civil partnerships send out the message that the state your long as heterosexual marriage as superior to other domestic setups
2. Charles Murray
  1. If fathers see the state will maintain their children some of them will abandon their responsibilities towards their families
  2. Providing council housing for unmarried teenage mothers
3. Evaluation
  1. Feminists- attempts to justify a return to the traditional patriarchal nuclear family that oppresses women
  2. Abbott & Wallace- cutting benefits would drive poor families into greater poverty
4. Conservative Government
  1. Denying council housing for teenage mothers
  2. Taxes that favour married couples (1998)
  3. Making absent fathers financially responsible for their children by setting up the Child Support Agency in 1993
  4. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government banned the promotion of homosexuality in local authorities (Section 28) (1988-2003)
  5. Evaluation
    1. It wrongly assumes the patriarchal nuclear family is natural wealth and socially constructed
New Labour Policies
1. Lengthened maternity leave (from 14 weeks to 39 weeks)
2. Flexible working patterns (parents with young children could ask for flexible working patterns from their employers) 2003
3. New Deal (1998) aimed to get single mothers back into paid employment through a range of supportive measures
4. Civil Partnership Act (2004) which enabled same-sex couples to register as civil partners
5. Evaluation- intervened too much in family life, arguing that this results in a nanny state where individuals rely on what they see as the overly generous benefits the government gives rather than people taking responsibility for themselves and their families
6. Put well being of children first- long term unemployed families & single mums had adequate housing & money
Coalition Government
1. Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties and continued many of the ideas developed by the New Right
2. To restore the tax advantages for married couples
3. Plans for both parents to share parental leave after childbirth
4. More support for couples whose relationship is breaking down through mediation services
5. The reintroduction of the married persons’ tax allowance (cut by New Labour) clearly indicates a preference and adds an incentive for marriage over cohabitation
6. Legal Aid budget cut substantially- cut people on low incomes to access free legal advice. As it's cut, some vulnerable groups, e.g. women who have no incomes of their own, will be unable to access legal advice when they most need it, e.g. if they experience domestic violence
7. Child Benefit became means tested
8. Troubled Families programme (2011)- get children back into school, reduce youth crime and anti- social behaviour, put adults on a path back to work and bring down the amount public services currently spend on them
Feminists Perspective
1. Land- social policies often assume that the ideal family is the patriarchal nuclear family with a male provider and female homemaker, along with their dependent children
2. Leonard- even where policies appear to benefit women, in reality they still reinforce the patriarchal family and act as a form of social control over women
3. Policies supporting the patriarchal family
  1. Child care: while the government pays for some childcare for pre-school children it's not enough for parents to work full-time unless they can meet the additional cost themselves- women are restricted from working and placed in a position of economic dependence on their partners
  2. Caring for the sick and elderly: government policies often assume that the family will provide this careful stop in generally means it's middle aged women who are expected to do the caring
  3. Maternity leave: Leonard- even when policies appear to support women; they may still enforce the patriarchal family and act as a form of social control over women
4. Radical feminists
  1. Little evidence of the ‘new man’ who does their fair share of domestic chores- women have acquired the ‘dual burden’
  2. Dunscombe and Marsden- women suffer from the ‘triple shift’ where they have to do paid work, domestic work and ‘emotion work’
5. Evaluations
  1. Shared Parental leave where both partners can share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between both parents
  2. Equal pay and sex discrimination laws are not designed to maintain patriarchy
  3. Rape within marriage was made a criminal offence in 1991
State vs Market
1. Since the beginning of the global recession in 2008, cutbacks in government spending throughout Europe have led to increased pressure on women to take more responsibility for caring for family members
2. Individuals are encouraged to use the market rather than the state to meet their needs, such as paying for private care of the elderly family members

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Family & Social Policy

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	Created by Holly Smith almost 2 years ago