New Right

• What do the New Right think of the Nuclear Family

  Family is essential for individuals (nuclear family being the ideal), scared of increase in cohabitation, fatherless families, divorce rates (SPFs) & same sex families as they can be traced from social problems (young boys)
• What does Murray think of the Nuclear family

  • Decline in nuclear families linked to the growing ‘underclass’ who increase the crime rate 
  • Increase in single parent/alternative families inadequately socialise children due to a lack of male role models to discipline them, these children fall into idleness, failure & criminality (juvenile delinquents)
• What do Dennis & Erdos think of the Nuclear Family

  • Think single parent families cannot be as successful in primary socialisation as the nuclear family 
  • Idea from study of IQs & criminal records of children if they grew up without a mole role model 
  • Boys from fatherless families grow up without restraints on their behaviour & won’t impose those restraints on their own children, raising the next generation of improperly socialised children
• What does Morgan think of the Nuclear Family

  Discusses effects of coming from a non-traditional family on children

  • Higher infant mortality rates for fatherless children 
  • ⅔ of children taken into care are from single parent families
  • Have lower vocabulary skills & more likely to be delinquent 
  • ⅔ of homeless had experienced previous family breakdown 

  Additionally children in step-families are more likely to to have behavioural issues & perform less well at school
• A03 of the New Right

  • Accused of looking back to a ‘golden age’ of family life (but alternative families still existed but often concealed & stigmatised)
  • Suggests the nuclear family is the ideal family structure but critics argue individuals should be free to choose (postmodernists) 
  • Describes underclass as ‘new rabble’ but critics argue this is ‘victim blaming’ for their own poverty
  • Chambers, many fears around lone-parent families & decline of marriage is a moral panic created by the media blaming groups for their problems