Sociology Flipped Learning — Families & Social Policy

• social policy: the plans and actions of state agencies 

• policies are based on laws introduced by government that provide the framework within which these agencies operatore

• most policies affect families either directly or indirectly

A Comparative View of Family Policy

• cross-cultural and historical examples can show extreme ways in which state policies can affect family life

• e.g., one-child policy in China

– China’s One-Child Policy

• government’s population control policy aimed to discourage couples from having more than one child

• supervised by workplace family planning committees

  • women seek permission to try and become pregnant

  • waiting list + quota for each factory

• couples that comply with the policy get extra benefits e.g., free child healthcare & higher tax allowances

  • only child will also get priority in education and housing

• couples who break agreement must repay allowances and pay a fine

• women face pressure to undergo sterilisation after their first child

– Communist Romania

• 1980s

• introduced a series of policies to drive up the birth rate

• restricted contraception and abortion, set up infertility treatment centres, made divorce more difficult, lowered legal age of marriage to 15 and unmarried adults and childless couples pay an extra 5% income tax

– Nazi Family Policy

• state pursued a twofold policy

• encouraged healthy & ‘racially pure’ to breed a ‘master race’

• official policy sought to keep women out of the workforce and confine them to children, kitchen & church

• state compulsorily sterilised 375k disabled people

  • many were later murdered

– Democratic Societies

• some argue democratic societies have the family as a private sphere of life where the government does not intervene except when things go wrong

• sociologists argue that the state’s social policies play an important role in shaping family life even in democratic societies

Perspectives on Families and Social Policy

Functionalism

• see the state as acting in the interests of society as a whole

• social policies are good for all

• policies help families to perform functions more effectively and make life better

• Fletcher argues the introduction of health, education and housing policies since the industrial revolution has led to the development of a welfare state that supports the family to function more effectively

• the existence of the NHS means that the family is better able to take care of its members when sick

• assumes all members of the family benefit equally

• assumes there is a march of progress

Donzelot: Policing the Family

• Donzelot argues policy is a form of state power and control over families

• uses Foucault’s concept of surveillance

  • power is not just held by the state but diffused throughout society and found within all relationships

• sees professionals as exercising power over their clients by using their expert knowledge to turn them into cases

• Donzelot is interested in how professionals carry out surveillance of families

  • social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families: the policing of families

• surveillance is not equal on all social classes

  • poor families are more likely to be see as problem families

  • targeted for improvement

• Condry notes the state may seek to control and regulate family life by imposing compulsory Parenting Orders through the courts

• Donzelot rejects the march of progress view and sees social policy as form of state control of the family

• focuses on the micro level of how the ‘caring professions’ act as agents of social control and shows importance of professional knowledge as a form of power and control

• Marxists & feminists criticise Donzelot for failing to identify who benefits from such policies 

The New Right

• in favour of conventional nuclear family

• see it as self-reliant and capable of caring and providing for the members

• the changes that have led to greater family diversity are threats to the conventional family

• state policies have encouraged these changes and undermined the nuclear family

• Almond argues that 

  • law making divorce easier undermines marriage as a lifelong commitment

  • introduction of civil partnerships and marriage for gay/lesbian couples shows that the state no longer sees heterosexual marriage as superior

  • tax laws discriminate against conventional families with a sole male breadwinner because they cannot transfer the non-working partner’s tax to the working partner so they pay more tax that dual-earner couples who have tax allowance

• also point out that increased rights for unmarried cohabitants make cohabitation and marriage more similar and sends the message that the state does not see marriage as special/better

  • e.g., adoption rights

– Lone Parents, Welfare Policy & the Dependency Culture

• Murray is particularly critical of welfare policy

• they see it as generous and encouraging deviant and dysfunctional family types

• welfare benefits offer perverse incentives: reward irresponsible/anti-social behaviour

  • e.g., fathers abandoning responsibilities because the state will maintain their children or providing council houses for unmarried teenage mothers

• so, social policy has a major role in the family

• they see current policies as perpetuating a dependency culture

• threatens the two essential functions that the family fulfils for society

  • successful socialisation of the young

  • maintenance of work ethic among men

– The New Right’s Solution

• policy must be changed with cuts on welfare and tighter restrictions on who is eligible for benefits

• this would have several advantages in their view e.g., taxes can be reduced and fathers would have more incentive to work and provide

• also advocate policies to support the traditional nuclear family 

  • taxes that favour married couples or making absent fathers financially responsible for their children

• they believe that the less the state interferes in families, the better family life will be

  • greater self-reliance will enable it to meet its members’ needs best

– Evaluation of the New Right View

• feminists argue that it is an attempt to justify a return to the traditional patriarchal family that subordinated women to the domestic role

• wrongly assumes the nuclear family is natural rather than socially constructed

• Abbott & Wallace argue cutting benefits would drive poor families into greater poverty and therefore less self-reliant

• ignore many policies that support and maintain the conventional nuclear family

– The New Right’s Influence on Policies

• first developed in the 70s

• expect to have a strong influence on the Conservative Party’s policies but it shows a more mixed picture

• some similarity between New Right ideas and New Labour policies

– Conservative Governments 1979-97

• Thatcher’s government banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities

  • ban on teaching that homosexuality was an acceptable family relationship

• also defined divorce as a social problem and emphasised the continued responsibility of parents for their children post-divorce

  • set up Child Support Agency to enforce maintenance payments made by absent parents

• however, they also introduced measures opposed by the New Right e.g., making divorce easier and giving illegitimate children the same rights as those born to married parents

– New Labour Government 1997-2010

• took the New Right view that the family is the bedrock of society and saw a family headed by a married, heterosexual couple as the best environment for bringing up children

• emphasised the need for parents to take responsibility for their children e.g., Parenting Orders for parents of truants or young offenders

• however, Silva & Smart note that New Labour rejected the NR view that the family should have just one male earner and recognised that women too go out to work

• NL policies favoured the kind of dual-earner neo-conventional family described by Chester

  • longer maternity leave, 3 months unpaid leave for both parents  right to seek time off work for family reasons

  • Working Families Tax Credit

  • New Deal

• argued that certain kinds of state intervention can improve life for families

  • e.g., welfare, taxation and minimum wage policies were partly aimed to lifting children out of poverty

• final area of difference was in the support for alternatives to the conventional heterosexual nuclear family

  • civil partnerships for same-sex couples

  • giving unmarried couples the same rights to adopt as married couples

  • outlawing discrimination on grounds of sexuality

– The Coalition Government 2010-15

• Hayton says the Conservatives have been divided between

• modernisers

  • recognise that families are now more diverse & willing to reflect this in policy

• traditionalists

  • favour NR view and reject diversity as morally wrong

• difficult to maintain a consistent policy line on the family

• e.g., they introduced gay marriage

• Coalition government’s financial austerity policies reflected the NR desire to cut public spending

• however, it failed to introduce policies that promote the NR ideal of a conventional heterosexual nuclear family

• Browne found that two-parent families with children fared badly as result of the Coalition tax and benefits policies

Feminism

• conflict view

• social institutions including the state help to maintain women’s subordination 

– Policy as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

• policies are based on the assumption about normal families

• Land argues many social policies assume that the ideal family is the patriarchal nuclear family with a male provider and a female homemaker and dependent children

• affects the kinds of policies governing family life

• policies reinforce that type of family at the expense of other types

• creates SFP

• e.g., if the state assumes that normal families are based on marriage & offers tax incentives to married couples that are not available to cohabiting couples, this may encourage marriage and discourage cohabitation

• makes it difficult for people to live in diverse family types

– Policies Supporting the Patriarchal Family

• identify numerous examples of policies that maintain the patriarchal family and reinforce women’s economic dependence

• tax & benefits policies

  • assume husbands are the main wage earners

  • wives as financial dependents

  • can make it impossible for wives to claim social security benefits since it is expected that their husbands will provide

• childcare

  • government pays for some childcare for preschool children

  • not enough to permit parents to work full-time unless they can meet the additional costs themselves

  • policies governing school timetables make it hard for parents to work full-time unless they can afford extra childcare

• care for the sick & elderly

  • policies assume that the family will provide this

  • middle-aged women are expected to do the caring

  • often prevents them from working FT and increases economic dependence

• Leonard argues that even where policies appear to support women, they may still reinforce the patriarchal family and act as a form of social control

• e.g., maternity leave policies benefit women but also reinforce patriarchy as it is more generous than paternity leave and encourages the assumption that women take care of the infants

• maternity benefits are low and encourage economic dependence

• child benefit is normally paid to the mother which assumes the child’s welfare is primarily her responsibility

Evaluation of the Feminist View

• not all policies are directed at maintaining patriarchy

  • e.g., equal pay and sex discrimination laws, lesbian marriage, benefits for lone parents, refuges for domestic violence escapers, etc.

• rape within marriage was made a criminal offence in 1991

Gender Regimes

• feminists argue that social policy reinforces patriarchy

• by examining policy from different societies, we can see whether this is inevitable

• Drew uses the idea of gender regimes to describe how social policies in different countries can either encourage or discourage gender equality in the family

• identifies two types of gender regime following different types of family policy

• familistic gender regimes

  • policies based on traditional gender division

  • e.g., Greece → little state welfare or publicly funded childcare

  • women rely heavily on support from extended kin

• individualistic gender regimes

  • policies based on belief that husbands and wives should be treated the same

  • wives not assumed as financially dependent

  • each partner has a separate entitlement to state benefits

  • e.g., Sweden → policies treat both partners are equally responsible for breadwinning and domestic tasks

• policies such as publicly funded childcare are expensive and involve major conflicts about who should benefit from social policies and who should pay

• so it is naive to assume that there is an inevitable march of progress towards gender equality

• feminists argue that since the 2008 recession, cutbacks in government spending throughout Europe have led to pressure on women to take more responsibility for caring for family members as the state retreats from providing welfare

• also a trend towards neo-liberal welfare policies where individuals and families are encouraged to use the market rather than the state to meet their needs