perspectives on family policy

Functionalists

* see state as acting in the interests of society as a whole and its social policies as being for the good of all.
* Functionalists see policies as helping families to perform their functions more effectively and making life better for their members.
* **Fletcher** - argues that introduction of health, education and housing policies in the years since the industrial revolution has gradually led to the development of a welfare state that supports the family in performing its functions more effectively e.g. the existence of the National Health Service means that the family today is better able to take care of its members when they are sick.

criticisms of Functionalist perspective

* assumes all members of the family benefit equally from family policies e.g. feminists argue policies benefit men at the expense of women
* assumes there is a march of progress, assumes social policy is making family life better e.g. Marxists argue policies can also turn the clock back and reverse progress - cutting welfare benefits

New Right

* see traditional nuclear family, with its division of labour between a male provider and a female home maker as self-reliant and capable of caring for its members.
* social policies should avoid doing anything that might undermine this natural self-reliant family.
* criticise many government policies for undermining the family and argue that governments often weaken the family’s self-reliance by providing overly generous welfare benefits, encouraging family diversity etc.
* **Murray** - argues that welfare benefits offer ‘perverse incentives’ and that they reward irresponsible or anti-social behaviour, encourages deviant and dysfunctional family types, e.g. if fathers see state will maintain their children some will abandon their responsibilities towards their family
* support cuts in Welfare benefits and tighter restrictions on who can receive/ is eligible for benefits e.g. cutting benefits reduces taxes and encourages fathers to stay in work and provide for family
* social policy is encouraging a dependency culture where individuals rely on the state to support them, threatens 2 functions of the family (successful socialisation of young, maintenance of work ethic among men)
* **Almond** - argues laws such as easier access to divorce undermine marriage as a life long commitment, civil partnerships suggests that the state no longer sees heterosexual couples as superior

criticisms of the New Right

* **Feminists** - attempt to justify a return to traditional patriarchal nuclear family that oppressed women and confined them to a domestic role
* wrongly assumes nuclear family is natural rather than a social construction
* **Abbott & Wallace** - cutting benefits would just push poorer families further into poverty and make them less self reliant
* ignore the many policies that maintain and support the conventional nuclear family

New Right’s solution

* policy needs to be changed - cuts in welfare spending and tighter restrictions on who is eligible for benefits
* argue denying council housing to unmarried teen mothers would remove a major incentive to become pregnant when very young
* advocate policies to support the traditional nuclear family e.g. taxes that favour married couples over cohabiting couples
* the less the state interferes with family life the better the family will be

Feminists

* **Liberal Feminists** - argue that changes such as the equal pay act and increasingly generous maternity leave and pay are sufficient to bring about gender equality.
* **Radical Feminists** - argue that patriarchy is so entrenched in society that mere policy changes alone are insufficient to bring about gender equality. They argue, for example, that despite the equal pay act, sexism still exists in the sphere of work, argue women have acquired the ‘dual burden’ of paid work and unpaid housework and the family remains patriarchal – men benefit from women’s paid earnings and their domestic labour e.g. if the state assumes that ‘normal’ families are based upon marriage and offer tax incentives to married couples that are not available to cohabiting couples, this will encourage marriage over cohabitation.

Marxists

* Claim that the main function of social policy is to maintain capitalism and that the role of sociologists should therefore be to criticise policy, not to serve the capitalist state.
* Institutions laws and policies are all instruments of the bourgeoise and therefore benefit them whilst exploiting the proletariat.
* In 1979, 50% of MPs had been to private school. Today it is reduced to about 19% however the average is 7%.
* They do not believe that family policy benefits the whole of society, just the interests of the bourgeoise.
* Policies are heavily balanced in the Bourgeoisie’s favour and policies that benefit the proletariat must be fought for and only to prevent riots. Many of these changes can be easily taken away.

Social Democrats

* Believe that family is the bedrock of society, and family headed by heterosexual couple as best environment for bringing up a child
* like the New Right, they emphasised need of parents to take responsibility for their children and introduced Parenting Orders for parents of young offenders and truants
* However, New Labour reject idea that man should be single earner and recognise that women now go to work, and so new labour policies favoured dual-earner neo-conventional families.
* This included longer maternity leave, Working Families Tax Credit (enabling parents to claim some tax relief on childcare costs) and The New Deal (helping lone parents to return to work).
* New labour also argued that certain kinds of state intervention could also help families. For example, their tax, welfare and minimum wage policies were aimed at lifting children out of poverty by redistributing income to the poor.
* Social Democrats also support alternatives to the traditional heterosexual nuclear family by policies such as civil partnerships for same-sex couples, giving unmarried couples the same rights as married couples and outlawing discrimination on the grounds of a person’s sexuality.

Donzelot

* has a conflict view of society and sees policy as a form of state power and control over families.
* uses Foucault’s concept of surveillance, Foucault sees power not just held by the government or the state but as diffused throughout society and found in all relationships. Foucault particularly sees professionals such as doctors and social workers as exercising power over their clients by using their expert knowledge to turn them into ‘cases’ to be dealt with
* Donzelot interested in how professionals carry out surveillance of families. He argues that social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families and calls this ‘the policing of families’.
* Poor families are much more likely to be seen as ‘problem families’ and as the causes of crime and anti-social behaviour. These are the families that professionals target for ‘improvement. e.g. parents of badly behaved children may be forced to take parenting classes on how to ‘correctly’ bring up their children

criticisms of Donzelot

* fails to identify who benefits from policies of surveillance
* **Marxists** - social policies generally operate in interests of capitalist class
* **Feminists** - men benefit from social policies

Feminist - Land

* many social policies assume that the ideal family is a patriarchal nuclear family, policies such as Tax and Benefit policies assume that the husbands are the main wage earner, and their wives are financially dependent upon them.
* norms of what the family should look like affect policy, these policies then often reinforce this type of family at the expense of other family types which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy e.g. if state assumes regular families based on marriage they will offer tax incentives to married couples which encourages marriage over cohabitation

Feminists - policies supporting patriarchal family

* tax and benefit policies assumes that the husband is the main wage earner and the wife is financially dependent on him which makes it impossible for wives to claim social security benefits because it is expected that the husband will provide for her
* government pays for some childcare for pre-school children but this is not enough for parents to work full-time unless they can cover the additional costs, women restricted from working and placed in financial dependence on their husbands
* **Leonard** - even policies that aim to support women still reinforce the patriarchal family e.g. women get much more generous maternity leave than men and encourages the assumption that the care of infants in down to mothers

criticisms of Feminist perspective

* not all policies are aimed at maintaining patriarchy e.g. equal pay act, benefits for lone parents, gay marriage, criminalisation of rape etc.

Gender regimes - Drew

* social policies in different countries can ither encourage or discourage gender equality in the family:
* **familistic gender regimes** - policies based on traditional gender division
* **individualistic gender regimes** - policies based on the belief that husbands and wives should be treated the same, wives not expected to be financially dependent
* most EU countries now moving towards individualistic gender regimes which will bring greater equality in the family,