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The Family and Social Policy

The Family and Social Policy. Feminist and Radical View. Feminists and other radicals have claimed that most state policy encourages the traditional nuclear family – 2 parents, male breadwinner and a wife who stays at hope and looks after the children and or elderly dependents

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The Family and Social Policy

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  1. The Family and Social Policy

  2. Feminist and Radical View • Feminists and other radicals have claimed that most state policy encourages the traditional nuclear family – 2 parents, male breadwinner and a wife who stays at hope and looks after the children and or elderly dependents • Policy therefore supports a certain ‘ideology of the family’ • A great deal of state policy through the 1980’s to today can be seen as being influenced by the New Right

  3. Examples • Daphne Johnson states that schools are organised (hours, parents evenings, holidays) in such away to make single parenthood or ‘dual worker’ families difficult • Roy Parker states that state aid for the elderly is deliberately not targeted at those who live with families • Lorraine Fox Harding suggests that housing policy favours married couples with single parents receiving the worst social housing. Houses themselves are designed for nuclear families not larger groups. Maternity and paternity leave rules reinforce gender roles

  4. Child Support Agency 1993 • Set up to enforce the payment of ‘maintenance’ for children by absent parents (normally fathers). By enforcing financial costs on divorced people it can be seen as supporting the traditional family. • The CSA also reduces the benefits paid to single mothers. Introduced by the Conservatives to both encourage ‘traditional family values’ and save the state money

  5. Policies which do not support the conventional Family • The liberalisation of divorce laws over the last 100 years • Reform of patriachical laws regarding marital rape in 1991 • Extending legal rights to cohabiters • Civil Partnerships for homosexual couples

  6. The New Right • Highly influential through Conservative rule 1980’s 1990’s e.g. Centre for policy studies – basic aim to reinforce and strengthen nuclear families AND save the State money. Families the cornerstone of society – self help rather than state help emphasised

  7. Family and New Labour • NL also influenced by New right thinking (perhaps a consequence of Blair’s own ‘Christianity’ – concern for teenage pregnancy, truancy, lack of role models, dysfunctional families very prominent in Blair’s rhetoric. • It is easy to conclude that Blair was talking about nuclear families as the ideal and the norm

  8. Supporting Families • 1998 consultation paper called ‘Supporting Families’ produced by NL containing a raft of measures to provide ‘better services and support for parents’ • Supporting families included measures intended to strengthen marriage – broader role for registrars giving advice, pre nuptial agreements, longer maternity and paternity leave. • In general NL policy has aimed to support and promote conventional nuclear families

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