Social policy

• People can have different views about what are desirable family structures and relationships
• Sociological views or beliefs about families can vary within families
• Diversity and consensus are both important in understanding families
• Functionalists see the family as a whole and its functions more important than the needs of individual members
• Conflict theorists see the family as a site of power struggles and inequality
• The welfare state and consensus policies in the 1940s and 1950s were seen as benefiting the family
• The welfare state provided services like the National Health Service, hospitals and social services to take care of families
• The welfare state aimed to help families to function more effectively
• The welfare state has been criticised on two main grounds: that it undermines the family and that it benefits men at the expense of women
• Feminists argue that the welfare state has reversed progress for women by confining them to a domestic role
• Donzelot has a conflict view of society and sees policy as a form of state power and control over families
• Donzelot uses Foucault's concept of surveillance (observing and monitoring) to show how professionals exercise power over families
• Professionals like doctors and social workers turn families into 'cases' to be dealt with using their expert knowledge
• Surveillance is not targeted equally on all social classes, with poor families more likely to be seen as 'problem' families
• The state may seek to control and regulate family life by imposing compulsory Parenting Orders
• Donzelot rejects the functionalists' view that social policy has created a better, freer or more humane society
• Marxists and feminists criticise Donzelot for failing to identify who benefits from policies of surveillance
• The New Right see changes like increased divorce, cohabitation and lone parenthood as threatening the traditional nuclear family and producing social problems
• The New Right argue that state policies have encouraged these changes and helped to undermine the nuclear family
• The New Right criticise welfare policies for providing 'generous' benefits that undermine the nuclear family and encourage 'deviant' family types
• The New Right see welfare benefits as rewarding irresponsible or anti-social behaviour
• The New Right argue that cutting welfare spending and tighter restrictions on benefits would give fathers more incentive to work and provide for their families
• The New Right advocate policies to support the traditional nuclear family, such as taxes favouring married couples
• Feminists argue the New Right view is an attempt to justify a return to the traditional patriarchal nuclear family that subordinated women
• Cutting benefits would simply drive many poor families into greater poverty, not make them more self-reliant
• The New Right ignore policies that support and maintain the conventional nuclear family rather than undermine it
• The patriarchal nuclear family is socially constructed, not natural
• Conservative policies under Thatcher included banning the promotion of homosexuality and emphasising parental responsibility after divorce
• New Labour policies recognised the need for both parents to work and provided support like longer maternity leave and tax credits for childcare
• New Labour rejected the New Right view that the family should have just one male earner
• New Labour supported alternatives to the conventional heterosexual nuclear family, like civil partnerships
• The Conservative-led governments since 2010 have been divided between traditionalists and modernisers on family policy
• Relief on childcare costs

  Policy to help with childcare expenses
• The New Deal


  Policy helping lone parents return to work
• These policies

  Reflect a further difference with the New Right, who oppose state intervention
• New Labour's argument


  Certain kinds of state intervention can improve life for families
• New Labour's welfare, taxation and benefits policies

  • Aimed at lifting children out of poverty by re-distributing income to the poor through higher benefits
• The New Right


  Disapprove of distributing income through taxes and benefits
• New Labour's support for alternatives to the heterosexual nuclear family


  Included policies such as civil partnerships for same-sex couples and giving unmarried couples the same rights to adopt as married couples
• Conservative divisions

  • Modernisers who recognise that families are now more diverse and are willing to reflect this in their policies
  • Traditionalists who favour a New Right view and see diversity as morally wrong