Family - New Right

The New Right is not a sociological theory, it s a political viewpoint. It has many similarities with functionalism however unlike Functionalists they don’t believe everything is working as efficiently as it should.

Murray

The New Right puts emphasis on individual responsibility and new right thinker Murray argues that the overgenerous welfare state (government) has removed the individual responsibility for poorer families this means that these families are having children which they cannot provide for knowing that they will get benefits. Murray sees this as a decline in the family as this problem contributes to wider social issues as this leads too a dependency culture and a lazy underclass. This is a group of people who drain society by avoiding work and living on health benefits.

Evaluation of Murray → The New Right follow a right wing ideology. It can be criticised by using left wing ideas as there are structural factors beyond peoples control, that can affect whether people have a job or not.

Dennis and Erdos

Dennis and Erdos build on Murrays ideas and specifically focus on the increase of single parent families. Dennis and Erdos argue this family instability leads to a lack of socialisation and causes problems such as drug and alcohol abuse, educational failure and increases crime. Dennis & Erdos call single parent families fatherless families as the vast majority of single parents are female. They believe a lack of a father figure causes young boys to miss out on the socialisation that a male brings and leads to all the problems mentioned above. → Basically saying that the mother doesn’t discipline the child like a father does.

Evaluation of Dennis and Erdos → One criticism of Dennis and Erdos is that there are other available father figures like a brother, uncle, grandad which can help with the raising of the child.