Social policy & the family
A
policy is a proposed or adopted
course or principle of action
 Schools have policies; for example
whether or not there should be a
uniform
 Social policies are actions
governments put in place to solve
problems, or to steer the country in
a particular direction
Social policy & the family
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Social policies vary from making gay marriage
legal, to introducing the EMA
All these policies affect the way society operates,
hence the term ‘social’ policy
During the 1980s social policies were being
designed to address concerns some politicians
had about the family
Successive governments have sought to construct
social policies which strengthened the traditional
family
The New Right are a group of thinkers who
believe the family is the cornerstone of all social
policies
Social policy & the family
The New Right are a group of thinkers who
believe the family is the cornerstone of all social
policies
 They see the nuclear family as the perfect
model of how all families should be
 Politicians like John Redwood were particularly
critical of young single-mothers
 Redwood expressed concern about the cost of
welfare payments to single-parent families &
how they encourage single-parenthood and the
subsequent creation of an underclass
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Social policy & the family
Single-parenthood was seen as the
greatest threat to the nuclear family
 The New Right also identified other areas
which were threatening the nuclear family
 Fatherless families
 Divorce
 Cohabitation
 Gay and lesbian couples/marriages
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Causes
Lone-parenting causes a breakdown of
traditional family values by saying other
types of families are equally as valid as the
traditional nuclear family
 Fatherless families causes over-generous
welfare payments to single mothers which
means fathers are let off their
responsibilities to their children
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Causes
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Increasing divorce rates has been brought
about by the rise in feminism which has
devalued marriage, domesticity, childrearing,
and has caused women to seek fulfilment
outside the home, such as the workplace
Cohabitation has caused an increase in
permissiveness and an erosion in loyalty
The increasing tolerance of gay and lesbian
couples has eroded the value of
heterosexual marriage
Consequences
The consequences for the family from the
above is the nuclear family becomes a
‘fragmented families’
 Fragmented families can no longer
function properly as effective socialisation
is impossible
 Ineffective socialisation causes children to
fail at school and are generally anti-social,
resulting in more criminal activity
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Consequences
Many New Right thinkers argue that poor
socialisation stems from absent fathers
 Families without fathers mean many
youngsters, particularly boys, lack male
role models, particularly when it comes to
discipline
 Therefore families no longer function in
an effective way which causes numerous
social problems.
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Solutions
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The New Right proposed to key solutions to
the problem of the underclass
First a return to traditional family values,
which means marriage for life and
recognition of the duties and responsibilities
of adults have when bringing children into
the world
Secondly a change in government policy so
that welfare payments would be designed to
support the nuclear family and penalise
those families which failed to live up to this
ideal
Solutions
These policies would be
 For all taxes and welfare benefits to
favour nuclear families
 For example the income tax threshold
(threshold is the amount of money
earned before a person pays income tax)
would be raised for married couples
 Another example for would be for
working family tax credits & child benefit
to be only for married couples
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Solutions
For the New Right, paying welfare benefits
to diverse family forms has the effect of
encouraging all types of other families to
become acceptable
 Cohabitation should be discouraged
possibly through the taxation system or
by restricting legal rights and privileges to
cohabiting couples.
 Divorce should also be made more
difficult through the legal system.
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Criticism - idealistic
Is the New Right spending too much time
looking to the past for a golden age which
never really existed?
 Victorian times were seen as the ideal,
but even then lone parenting, cohabitation
and extra-marital relations were common
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Criticism – blame game
The New Right tends to blame victims for
things that are not of their own making
 Many of the problems identified come
from low wages & a lack of employment
opportunities
 Also there’s cultural changes, these are
endemic rather than unique to an
underclass
 For example many celebrities are single
parents, cohabit, divorce or have affairs
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