New Right and the Family

The New Right:

  • More allied to political movements than sociological ones, the New Right took inspiration from functionalist ideas

  • Closely linked to Conservatives in the UK and Republicans in the USA, New Right ideas rose to prominence in the Late 1970s through to present day

  • Reduced state intervention, personal responsibility and traditional values

New Right and Family:

  • Argued that progressive policies throughout the 1960s and 1970s had led to the decline of traditional family values

  • Increases in divorce, lone-parent families and permissive policies relating to reproductive rights and sexuality have seen the influence of family decline

  • Looking back on a ‘golden age’ of family life, stable family structures that could provide for their own needs through employment

Charles Murray:

  • Murray argued that state spending on benefits had created a form of welfare dependency

  • Created a generation of ‘idle young men’ who lacked father figures and were the formation of an underclass

  • The underclass developed norms and values that differed from the rest of society, demonstrating criminal and antisocial behaviours

Influence on family policy:

  • Creation of CSA to make sure fathers paid support for their children

  • Increased tax allowances for married couples

  • Lower taxation to enable families to support themselves

  • Reduction of state benefits- caps on housing benefit, 2-child policy

  • Section 28- Schools not allowed to teach about homosexuality

  • Education- fines on parents for removing children from school

  • Crime policies- Introduction of parenting classes for parents of antisocial children

  • Their policies aimed to promote personal responsibility for the behaviour of families

Influence of neo-liberal economics:

  • New Right ideas were influenced by neo-liberal economics

  • Lower state spending and more personal choice and responsibility

  • Reduction in benefits creates an incentive to work- even if it is for low wages

  • This allows the family to have greater personal responsibility for their family

Evaluations of New Right:

  • Feminists argue that female lone-parent families are being scapegoated for structural inequalities in society

  • Lone parents are more likely to end up in poverty, even when at work, as a result of cuts to state spending

  • Critics state that the New Right is focused on the economy rather than the social aspect of society and can lead to the marginalisation of social groups