Social policy & the family

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A comparative view

  • China's one policy - Couples who comply with the policy get extra benefits, such as; free child healthcare & higher tax allowances, couples who break it must repay their allowances & pay a fine. Women feel pressured to get sterilised after their first child to avoid other children. 
  • Communist Romania - They aimed to drive up the birth rate by restricting contraception/ abortion, made divorce difficult, lowered the legal age of marriage to 15 & made unmarried adults/childless couples pay an extra 5% income tax. 
  • Nazi family policy - Encouraged 'racial purity' in order to breed a 'master race' by restricting access to abortion & contraception. Women were confined to 'children, kitchen & church' to better perform their biological role. They sterilised disabled people because they were deemed unfit to breed, soon murdering them in concentration camps. 
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Family policy

  • 1979-97 Conservatives - M Thatcher banned the promotion of homosexuality, introduced the Child Support Agency to enforce maintenance payments from absent parents, made divorce easier & gave 'illegitimate' children the same rights as those born to married parents.
  • 1997-2010  New Labour - Longer maternity leave for both parents, working tax credit helped with childcare costs & the New Deal helped lone parents return to work. Smart & Silva; they rejected the New Right view, they believed women should work too. 
  • They also introduced civil partnerships (2005), giving unmarried/gay couples the same rights to adopt as heterosexual married couples.
  • 2010-15  Coalition - Income tax only available to those with children under 7, tripling tuition fees & removing the EMA, leaving disadvantaged families behind. However, they introduced gay marriage which suggests a divide in the Conversative gov. some are traditional (New Right), others are modernist. 
  • The New Right - Abbot & Wallace; they attack welfare policies that are too lenient with parents, they are against back to work programmes that take new mothers back to work, because they think it keeps people reliant/mothers should be at home. 
  • Feminism - Land; social policy creates an SPF because it reinforces the traditional nuclear family, making it difficult for people to live in other family types. 
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Perspectives on family policy

  • Functionalism - Fletcher; health, education & housing policies has led to a development of the welfare state that helps the family perform it's functions more effectively. 
  • Critcisms - Feminists; assumes all members of the family benefit from social policy equally, although men benefit more. Marxists; assumes 'march of progress' although they can turn the clock back by cutting welfare benefits to poor families. 
  • Policing the family - Donzelot; social policy is a form of state control of the family, social workers, doctors etc...Use their knowledge to control & change families.
  • Condry; the state seek to control family life by imposing compulsory Parenting Orders through the courts, teaching parents the 'correct' way to bring up their children. 
  • Crticisms - Marxists, feminists; they fail to recognise that the capitalist class/men benefit from these policies of surveillence. 
  • The New Right - Almond; making divorce/gay relationships easier undermine the idea of marriage as a lifelong commitment between man & woman. Murray; the welfare state is too generous, men see the welfare state looking after their families so they can abandon them, providing council housing for unmarried pregnant mothers encourage teenage pregnancy. 
  • Stopping state interference will give more people the incentive to work/stay married. 
  • Criticisms - Abbot & Wallace; cutting benefits would drive poorer families into greater poverty, making them less self-reliant. 
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