Term
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Definition
Gave women more control over fertility but New Right disagreed
-> threat to nuclear family |
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Term
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Definition
| Made divorce an easier legal process + women more independent but New Right ->this encourages lone-parents families |
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Term
| Child Maintenance Service |
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Definition
Allowed mothers to receive support and pressured men to participate in their children's upbringing.
Feminists -> women shouldn't have to depend on a man |
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Term
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Definition
Gave older people better standards of life
Feminists -> often a burden on women |
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Term
| Compulsory education and extension of school leaving age |
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Definition
Allowed childcare and children longer time in education.
Marxists -> education feeds capitalism |
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Term
| Tax credits for married couples |
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Definition
New Right -> encourages nuclear family
Feminists -> means of enforcing patriarchal ideas within society |
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Term
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Definition
Allows children more protection and rights
Some feminists -> Firestone (1979) - protection is seen as child oppression |
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Term
| 2014 Same-sex Marriage Act |
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Definition
Allows more family diversity (feminists)
New Right -> threatens the nuclear family
Patricia Morgan - gay families are unnatural |
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Term
1975 Sex Discrimination Act
1970 Equal Pay Act |
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Definition
Feminists = yes! Allowing more equality
New Right -> these policies distracted women from their 'natural' calling as mothers.
Led to generations of children being 'damaged' by maternal deprivation |
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Term
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Definition
New Right: over-generous welfare system responsible for rise in lone-parent families
Patricia Morgan -> 2/3 of the average income of one-parent families comes from benefits and tax credits |
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Term
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Definition
Lewis (2007): before 1997, UK govs didn't explicitly formulate family policy
BUT
Labour: • appointed Minister for Children in 2003
• formed Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2007
• Child Tax Credit in 2003
(Finch, 2003- recognised children as individuals in their own right) |
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Term
EVALUATION OF LABOUR POLICY
Criticisms |
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Definition
New Right -> Labour's explicit family policy undermines family privacy - constructing a 'nanny state' that interfered excessively in family life
Morgan: undermined traditional family and marriage |
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Term
EVALUATION OF LABOUR POLICY
Strengths |
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Definition
| Judge (2012): between 1999 and 2011 the number of children in poverty was reduced by 900,000 |
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Term
| COALITION FAMILY POLICY 2010-2015 |
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Definition
• Abolished Department for Children, Schools and Families -->
REPLACED WITH DfE
• The Troubled Families Programme (2012) - formed due to anxiety over 'broken families' (dubbed by Butler,2010)
See Murray |
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Term
KEY THEORIST: MURRAY
His effect on 'Breakdown Britain'
Coalition gov |
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Definition
Breakdown Britain influence by Murray's notion of an underclass.
2006 CSJ produced Breakdown Britain, family breakdown underpinned by:
• dissolution - because divorce was too easy to obtain
• dysfunction - because parents weren't taking responsibility for the behaviour of their children
• dad-lessness - because too many fathers were losing contact with their children or refusing to take responsibility for them |
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Term
| CRITICISMS OF TROUBLED FAMILIES PROGRAMME |
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Definition
• Historians: presents a misleading and empirically inaccurate picture of a British past filled with 'happy untroubled families' - historical evidence = every generation over last 200 years - moral panic over trouble families
• Data: 3/4 troubled families who have supposedly been 'turned around' = still committing crime
• UNICEF: Coalitions performance on child poverty = disappointed compared to other wealthy countries that have done better despite the recession |
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Term
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Definition
New Right: criticised both govs for undermining nuclear family and sexual division of labour
Feminist critics such as Leanord: familial and patriarchal ideologies still shape most state policy on the family:
• mothers still most often awarded custody after divorce
• over past 30 years: tax/welfare policies generally favoured heterosexual married couple
• See Donezlot (1979)! |
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Term
KEY THEORIST: DONZELOT (1979)
'The Policing of Families' |
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Definition
Familial ideology is part of a wider process of surveillance and social control operated by the state.
Family social policies mainly targeted at:
• 'controlling' problem social groups, such as so-called underclass
• preventing and/or solving wider social problems such as juvenile delinquency
Family policy therefore focuses on keeping families intact, supporting parents and producing children who are psychologically well-adjusted and will conform to cultural expectations |
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Term
INTERNATIONAL EXAMPLES
OF FAMILY POLICY |
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Definition
• China's one-child policy
• Nazi family policy: encouraged 'racially pure' to breed a master-race (by restricting abortion and contraception) |
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Term
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Definition
Held by Functionalists who see society as built on values of harmony and consensus
• social policies are for the good of everybody |
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Term
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Definition
• equate 'familial ideology' with 'patriarchal ideology'
• argue that the state, it's laws and social policies, maintain family subordination and the unequal division of labour in th family
• argue that the nuclear family is seen, wrongly, as the 'norm' against which all other family types are considered 'deviant' |
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Term
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Definition
• the state and its policies benefit capitalism and help maintain class inequality and exploitation
• since the proletariat are paid less than the value of what they produce, in order to allow the bourgeoise to make a profit, conflict occurs
• for example: the low level of state pensions is evidence of the way the state views the uselessness of too-old workers who have to be state-maintained at the lowest possible cost to the state |
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Term
KEY THEORIST: DREW (1995)
Two types of 'gender regimes' |
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Definition
• traditional familistic gender regimes: base their family policies on the assumption that the husband works while wife is home
E.g. Greece: little state welfare or publicly funded childcare
• individualistic gender regimes: base their family policies on the belief that husbands and wives should be treated the same
E.g. Sweden: quality opportunities polices, parental leave and good quality welfare services that mean women are less dependent on husbands and more opportunities to work |
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