Social Policy

WHAT’S THIS ABOUT?

• Governments decide on ‘policy’ – how the country is going to be governed and what laws will be needed.
• Governments often have policies and pass laws on ‘social policy’ and this often includes the role of the family and its place in the kind of society they want to see.
• These policies can have an important impact on families – how they are structured and how they relate to each other.

Examples:

E.g. China’s ‘one child policy’ encouraged by benefits for those who have only 1 child and (lower taxes, payments, better educational opportunities) and also penalties for those who have more (lose benefits, higher taxes, compulsory sterilisation).

E.g. Romania in the 1980s – whose population was declining so they encouraged more babies to be born by making abortion and contraception more difficult and lowering the age of marriage to 15

GOVERNMENT POLICY AND THE FAMILY IN BRITAIN

Example one: The New Right and the Conservative Party 1979-1997

During this period the Conservative were in power and their ideas were dominated by the ‘New Right’ led by Mrs. Thatcher and her followers and then after 1990 by John Major as PM.

They were concerned about the decline of authority and respect in society and alarmed at the rise in crime, disorder and the decline of traditional values. They were deeply concerned about the decline of the traditional nuclear family. Their ideal was of a society made up of hard working traditional two parent families with children who stood on their own two feet and did not rely on benefits.

So their attitude towards the family was:

(a) They valued the traditional ‘nuclear’ family with two parents, dependent children and a domestic division of labour.

(b) This kind of family was ‘natural’ (e.g. unlike unnatural single parent or same sex).

(c) This kind of family was the foundation of our society and needed to be protected and encouraged.

They saw the main threat to this kind of family as the welfare state and benefits system which encouraged a ‘dependency culture’. It:

(a) Encourages single mothers because they know they can rely on benefits to keep going – and this takes away the responsibility of the father to provide for the children – so he can opt out. This encourages single parent families

(b) Providing housing for single mothers also encourages young girls to get pregnant and become single parents

(c) Single parent families are ‘anti social’ and cause many social problems because there is no male role model – the children of single parents are more likely to commit crime or be involved in drug and alcohol abuse e.g.

New Right policies included:

They tried to strengthen the traditional family with:

The Child Support Agency 1993  – which forced natural fathers to provide financially for their children in the event of a split – forcing them to accept responsibility and not rely on benefits.

Married Couples Allowance – tax relief (lower taxes) for married couples – to encourage marriage rather than co-habiting.

Back to Basics – an idea of John Major 1990-97. He wanted a return to traditional family values of the kind which existed before the permissive society of the 1960s onwards. This failed.

EAMPLE TWO – NEW LABOUR POLICIES 1997 – 2010.

Some of the policies of the Labour Governments under Tony Blair (1997-2007) and Gordon Brown (2007-2020) were supportive of the family and some were not. They were not as committed to preserving the nuclear family at all costs  – they were much more concerned to eliminate poverty and particularly child poverty.

Those policies which tended to reverse the policies of the New Right and were not so targeted at preserving the nuclear family were:

(a) Working Family Tax Credits 1997 – made it easier for women with children to get back to work – by reducing child care costs. It aimed to help poor families and not just the nuclear family.

(b) The Minimum Wage – again designed to help the poor and not just traditional families

(c) Child Tax Credits 2003 – again aimed at helping poor families with children and not just the traditional family by helping with childcare.

(d) Abolishing the Married Couples Tax Allowence – this removed the Conservative measure which gave support for traditional married couples.

(e) Every Child Matters – a policy aimed at helping poor children regardless of their family situation.

(f) Sure Start – 1998 gave £1.5 billion to help the poorest and most deprived children.

New Labour was concerned to help the poor and deprived children – they did not discriminate between the kinds of family so the help went to single parents as well as traditional nuclear families.

The Coalition 2010 – TODAY

David Cameron and his new Conservative led coalition government (with Clegg and the Lib Dems) have in some aspects returned to support the traditional nuclear family by promising –

(a) To restore the tax advantages for married couples

(b) Plans for the mother and father to share parental leave after childbirth

(c) More support for couples whose relationship is breaking down – mediation services.

(d) The traditionalist wing of the party led by Iain Duncan Smith has also blamed the rise of the single parent family and decline of the traditional family for most of Britain’s problems – what they call ‘Broken Britain’ and Cameron has also repeatedly emphasised the importance of the traditional family for social stability in Britain.

But the liberal wing of the party has tried to move away from the New Right position and accept all kinds of family arrangements  – this is called ‘inclusion’. They have accepted single parents and also same sex families as ‘normal’ and not ‘unnatural’.

THEORETICAL PERSEPCTIVES ON FAMILY POLICY.

Functionalist

• They see the family as performing vital ‘functions’ for society as a whole eg socialisation f children, stability in relationships.
• They also see the state or government as the body which looks after the interests of the society as a whole and so has a vital role in supporting the family in performing its functions.
• This is why the state intervenes to help by providing healthcare (NHS) free state education, and all kinds of family support through the tax and benefits system

Feminists

They see the family and all social institutions including the state as supporting a ‘patriarchal’ or male dominated society.

The state naturally supports the ‘nuclear’ family because it promotes the domination of the father so: the state gives benefits and support for such families rather than single parent or co-habiting families which are less male dominated.

E.g. tax and benefits policies assume that the man is the head of the household and that the wife is his dependent  – wives become financially dependent.

E.g. maternity leave – is mainly for the woman emphasising that she and not the husband is the main child carer.

So state policy supports traditional gender roles.

NB this is not always the case in all societies e.g. Eileen Drew did a comparative study of social policies in different countries in the 1990’s and found that they could be divided into two kinds.

Eileen Draw

(a) Familistic Gender Regimes – where the state supported the traditional family and assumed that the man went out to work and the women was the housekeeper and child carer e.g. Greece where there is no welfare for families as such  – the women in the extended family support each other

(b) Individualistic Gender Regimes  – where each partner in the marriage or relationship is treated equally and benefits apply to both e.g. Sweden where the state provides childcare

More European countries are moving towards the second type – so state policy in general is supporting more equality in families.

Marxists

Believe that:

• The essential feature of modern society is that it is a ‘capitalist’ society
• This means that a small group of capitalist owners of industry and business are in control and have all the power and wealth – and the rest – the ‘workers’ are exploited by them
• All aspects of society are designed to support and promote the capitalists system eg media, culture, politics
• This includes the family itself – which needs to be secure and stable to support a constant supply of workers for the capitalists system.
• The state also props up the capitalists system and supports this role for the family – so its policies tend to support the nuclear family which is the one the capitalists prefer.

So the ‘real’ source of family policy in a capitalists society like ours is the needs of the capitalists system itself for workers  who live in stable families – this is what the state encourages.

The ‘Surveillance Society’?

2 authors – DONZELOT and CONDRY  have a different view of the way the state and social policy affect the family:

1. The state employs a variety of professionals like doctors, social workers, health specialists to carry out its social policy.
2. On the surface they are ‘helping’ people.
3. In reality they are really ‘policing’ families on behalf of the state – their job is to report on those families who are a ‘problem’ and their job is to make sure that they conform to the ‘correct’ behaviour demanded by society.
4. These ‘professionals’ are part of the surveillance state and they use their knowledge and power to control and change the behaviour of families.

Donzelot