Evaluation of the New Right theory of the family

How has the New Right contributed?

• Their theory has contributed heavily to a family ideology that dominates both pop culture and common-sense thinking about families and how their members should behave.

What is said about social policy?

• Some sociologists argue social policy hasn’t undermined the nuclear family as said by the New Right.

• Rather, it’s argued social policy has largely supported both traditional marriage and the nuclear family.

How has social policy supported the nuclear family?

• Tax and welfare policies have generally favoured the heterosexual married couple rather than cohabiting couples, single parents or same-sex couples.

• Government ministers frequently make reference to the idea that the nuclear family is the best possible type to bring children up in and that marriage is preferable to cohabitation.

• Payment of child benefit to the mother and the government’s reluctance to totally fund free universal nursery care have reinforced the idea that women should take the main responsibility for children.

• The ‘Child Support Agency’ (CSA) reinforces the idea that fathers should be economically responsible for their children.

• The social policy for maternity rights reinforces the idea that women should be more responsible for children than men because women are granted more paid leave from work than their male spouse.

• Most council houses were built with the nuclear family in mind.

Why was ‘Fathers For Justice’ set up?

• Some unmarried fathers are actually denied rights over their children. Hence the setting up of this pressure group.

What is said about the New Right and familial ideology?

• Family or familial ideology is mainly made up of a set of ideas about how family life should be organised – dominating public and media debates about the best way to organise family life.

• These ideas, e.g nuclear family is the most stable, single parents are a problem, divorce is too easy to obtain, women should stay at home – have originated in New Right ideas about family life.

What do feminists say about familial ideology?

• Say it’s problematic.

• Patriarchal as it restricts women to the home.

• Over-idealises the nuclear family as ‘too good to be true’, which distracts from the ‘dark side’ of family life.

  • E.g Problems caused by divorce, violence, abuse, poverty.

• Portrays divorce in a negative way.

• Led to the idea that the family is a private institution that requires little intervention from the state, but this idea has meant that problems such as child abuse were ignored for many years.

• Dismisses other family types as deviant, wrong or broken and suggests they’re the cause of a large number of social problems despite the evidence suggesting that these other types of family raise children just as well as the nuclear family.