Social policy

• China's one-child policy


  • Aimed at controlling the population by discouraging children from having more than one child
  • Workplace family planning committees means women have to seek permission to be pregnant
  • Couples who follow the policy get benefits like free child healthcare, while those who don't have to repay the allowances of the agreement as well as a fine
• Communist Romania's policies in the 1980s

  • Restricted contraception and abortion
  • Made divorce more difficult
  • Lowered the legal marriage age to 15
  • Made unmarried adults and childless couples pay an extra 5% income tax
• Nazi family policy in the 1930s

  • Encouraged the 'racially pure' to breed a 'master race' by restricting abortion and contraception access, and keeping women in their 'biological role' of children, kitchen and church
  • Sterilised 375,000 disabled people who were deemed 'unfit to breed'
• Democratic societies' view of the family

  Britain mostly sees the family as a private sphere the government shouldn't be involved in- except for cases of child abuse
• Functionalist perspective on families & social policy


  • Believe the state acts in the interest of society, so policies they make are for the good of all
  • Fletcher (1996)- health, housing and education policies since the industrial revolution have led to the development of the welfare state- which supports the family in performing it's functions better
• Criticisms of the functionalist view

  • It assumes social policy benefits family members equally- whereas feminist argue they benefit men over women
  • It assumes there's a march of progress where social policy makes the family better and better-whereas Marxists argue policies like cutting family's welfare benefits have the opposite effect
• Donzelot (1977)- policing the family


  • Refers to how professionals carry out surveillance of families
  • He argues social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families
  • This surveillance isn't carried out equally- poor families are seen as a 'problem' and the cause of crime and anti-social behaviour- which is why professionals target them for improvement
• Evaluation of Donzelot's perspective

  • Focusing on the micro level of how the 'caring professionals' control and monitor the family, we can see how professional knowledge acts as a form of power and control
  • However- Donzelot fails to identify who benefits from the policing of families. Marxists say social policies are in the interests of the capitalist class, and feminists say that men benefit from them the most
• New Right perspective on families & social policy

  • They favour the traditional nuclear family with a division of labour- as this family type is naturally self-reliant and capable of caring for members and socialising children
  • They believe that the changes that cause more family diversity (increased divorce, cohabitation, lone parents, etc) threaten the conventional family and produce social problems like crime and dependency
  • They claim that recent state policies are undermining the nuclear family
• Almond (2006) on New Right views


  • Laws making divorce easier- undermine marriage as a lifelong commitment made between men and women
  • Legalising gay marriage- sends the message that straight marriages are no longer the superior set-up
  • Tax laws- discriminate against conventional families with a male breadwinner as they can't transfer the non-working wife's tax allowance to him. Dual-earners both get tax allowance
• Murray (1990) on New Right views


  • Criticises welfare policy for its 'generous' welfare benefits like council housing for teen mums and cash payments for lone-parent families
  • He argues they undermine the traditional nuclear family, and encourages deviant/dysfunctional family types that harm society
  • Welfare benefits offer perverse incentives like fathers abandoning their responsibilities and teenage girls getting pregnant to get a council house
• New Right's solution


  • Cutting welfare benefits and having tight restrictions on who's eligible for it
  • Reducing taxes to give fathers incentive to both work and provide for their family
  • Denying teen girls council housing to remove the incentive to get pregnant
  • Policies that support the nuclear family- taxes favouring those married and making absent fathers financially responsible for their children
• Evaluation of the New Right

  • Feminists- this viewpoint simply justifies going back to the traditional nuclear family where women are controlled and oppressed in the domestic role
  • It wrongly assumes the patriarchal family is natural instead of socially constructed
  • Abbott & Wallace (1992)- cutting benefits simply drives poor families into poverty, making them even less self-reliant
• New Right's influence on policies

  • Thatcher's government followed the New Right view and banned local authorities from promoting homosexuality, and emphasised parental responsibility after divorce
  • New Labour governments were similar to the New Right, also emphasising parental responsibility, but favoured a neo-conventional family where women go to work too
  • Conservative governments 2010+ split into modernists willing to reflect increased family diversity in policies, and traditionalists who see diversity as morally wrong
• Feminist perspective on families & social policy

  • They argue that the state and its policies help maintain women's subordinate position and unequal gender division in the family
  • Land (1978)- social policies assume the ideal family is patriarchal and nuclear, reinforcing this norm over other family types
  • Policies supporting the patriarchal family include tax & benefits policies assuming husbands are the wage earners and wives are dependent, and childcare/care policies that prevent women from working full-time
• Gender regimes


  • Examining social policy across different societies can tell us if patriarchy is inevitable or if there are different policies that will encourage more equal family relationships
  • Feministic gender regimes- policies are based on the traditional gender division of labour
  • Individualistic gender regimes- policies based on the belief that husbands and wives aren't the same, so wives aren't assumed to be dependent
• Drew argues that European Union countries are moving towards individualistic regimes, which will bring society away from traditional regimes and towards greater gender equality in family roles and relationships