social policy - notes

Direct social policy: made to specifically have an impact on a certain area, e.g. Divorce Reform Act 1969, directly affects family life

Indirect social policy: made to specifically have an impact on one area, but also ends up affecting another area too, e.g. raising the school leaving age to 18 is aimed at having an impact on educational achievement, but also affects family life indirectly

New right

Charles Murray - claimed social problems like, social disruption, crime, abuse, poor academic achievements was caused by:

~ Divorce

~ Family diversity

~ Absent fathers / lone-mothers

  • Lone-mother families - children lack a male role model & authority figure which leads to rising crime rates among young males

  • Benefits - if fathers see that the state maintain their children, some of them will abandon their responsibilities to their families, & makes citizens too dependent on the state

  • Policies they support:

  1. Those that support the nuclear family - taxes that favour married couples over cohabiting

  2. The child support agency, who’s role is to make absent dads pay for their children


Conservative Gov - 1979

  • Thatcher - believed the UK had become a ‘nanny state’ with too much dependency on the government

Conservatives believed in reduced state dependency to make individuals more responsible for heir own lives

& encouraged the nuclear family

  • Policies

~ Section 28 1988 - banned the promotion & teaching of homosexuality by schools & local authorities

~ Child Support Agency 1993 - enforces maintenance payments by absent parents due to single parenthood being seen as a social problem

~ Married Couples Tax Break - financial incentives for couples to get married to reduce their annual tax bill

New Labour Gov - 1997

  • Blair - “family is the bedrock of society and should be headed by a married heterosexual couple”

Favour the nuclear family

  • Carol Smart identified 3 differences between New Right & New Labour politics:

  1. State intervention actually helps families, rather than encourages dependency

  2. Rejected the idea of housewife vs breadwinner, suggesting women should work as well

  3. Supported family diversity, rather than demonised it

  • Policies

~ Parenting Orders - classes for parents of truants & young offenders to emphasise the need of parents to take responsibility for their own children

~ Longer maternity leave - makes it easier for women to work

~ New Deal Policy - helped lone-parents return to work by offering Jobseeker’s Allowance, childcare support, flexible working arrangements, individual action plans to build skills & employability

~ Civil partnerships for same-sex couples, outlawed discrimination on the grounds of sexuality, & gave unmarried couples the right to adopt

Conservative-led Gov - 2010

Cameron

During this time there was divide amongst the conservatives:

. Modernisers - recognise families are more diverse

. Traditionalists - reject diversity as morally wrong

This meant the Conservative Party found it difficult to maintain a consistent policy line on the family

  • Policies

~ Introduction of same-sex marriage 2013

~ Shared parental leave - gives parents the option to share up to 50 weeks of leave following the brith of their child, giving families more flexibility in balancing childcare responsibilities

~ Free childcare for working parents - 15 hours per week for toddlers

~ Benefit Cap - limited the total amount of welfare benefits a family could receive, this intended to reduce dependency on state support & encourage families to seek employment

Feminism

Conflict view - see society as patriarchal, benefiting men at women’s expense. All institutions help to maintain women’s subordinate position & the unequal gender division of labour in the family

  • Barrett & McIntosh - most social policy has been patriarchal & anti-social towards women and minority groups:

  1. Involve the exploitation of women through the triple shift,

E.g. childcare & care for the sick and elderly still relies on the women, policies like maternity leave reinforce this

  1. Label other family types as deviant threats, every time a policy is made to strengthen the nuclear family it condemns other family types

E.g. Married couples tax break, section 28

  • Drew

Gender regimes - used to describe how social policies in different countries can either encourage or discourage gender equality

  • Two types:

  1. Familistic gender regimes - policies based on a traditional breadwinner, housewife division

E.g. Greece provides little state welfare for children - women must remain in the home

  1. Individualistic gender regimes - policies based on the belief that husbands & wives should be treated equally

E.g. Sweden has adequate provision of childcare & shared parental leave

  • Evaluation

~ Widely applicable across different counties, enables comparisons

~ Oversimplifies the diversity of policies across countries, some policies may not fit neatly into either regime

Postmodernism

  • Donzelot - families are subject to state surveillance & control through social policies, the state uses professionals like social workers, health visitors, teachers to ‘police’ families, ensuring that they conform to social norms about parenting, childcare, & relationships

Working class families are often targeted by interventions that aim to ‘improve’ their parenting, reflects class-based assumptions about what constitutes ‘good’ family practices

E.g. Parenting Orders (Blair) - required parents (often working-class) of children involved in truancy or anti-social behaviour to attend parenting classes

  • Evaluation

~ Demonstrates how the ‘caring professions’ of the government are used as a form of social control

~ Doesn’t specify who benefits from this ‘policing’ which makes his argument less specific compared to Marxist or Feminist perspectives