AS Mocks Families and Households Flashcards
What is government policy?
4 types
Distributive policy – aimed at allocating resources in society e.g. allocating funding to the NHS.
Redistributive policy – aimed at transferring wealth equally between different portions of society e.g. nationalisation/privatisation of industry.
Regulatory policy – setting laws and rules that impede freedom of choice to benefit wider society e.g. road speed limits
Constituent policy – policies aimed at improving the power and decision-making structures of the country itself e.g. changes to the voting and electoral system.
What is social policy?
Social policies are ones designed at addressing how human needs are met such as security, work, healthcare, education and wellbeing.
What are key areas of government policy likely to impact upon families?
Childcare Divorce Taxation Education Paediatric health Adoption
What policies did the 1979 Conservative government change?
The Children Act 1989 – a piece of legislation that clearly outlined the rights of children
The Child Support Agency, 1993 – established to ensure absent fathers paid maintenance for the upbringing of their children rather than the government paying
Proposed changes to divorce rules – there was a wish on the part of the Thatcher government to make divorce more difficult.
Section 28 – The government introduce a rule, in 1988, that prevented local government from “promoting” homosexuality and included the provision that schools could not teach “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.”
Back to Basics – As prime minister, John Major urged a “back to basics” approach, which he put forward as traditional family values. It was, at the time, associated with rhetorical attacks on lone-parents by some Conservative ministers with a clear New Right perspective
What policies did the New Labour government change?
Cuts to lone parent benefits – In the first year of the Blair government, they made some severe cuts to the benefits paid to lone parents. The rationale was that that single parents should go to work while the government would ensure there was more cheap or free childcare.
Paid paternity leave – From 2003, men were able to get two weeks of paid parental leave.
Civil Partnership Act (2005) – allowed same-sex relationships to be legally recognised on the same terms as marriage
Adoption and Children’s Act (2002) allowed same-sex couples to adopt children (as well as allowing unmarried heterosexual couples and single people to adopt too).
Equal age of consent in 2001 and the repeal of Section 28 in 2003.
What policies did the Coalition government change?
Removing the so-called couples’ penalty was an approach to ensuring that the benefits system did not include a perverse incentive for couples to break up in order to receive more benefits.
Shared parental leave – Both parties in the coalition were keen for parental leave to be able to be shared equally between men and women, rather than it being assumed that women would take an extended period off work while men would only be entitled to two weeks.
Equal marriage – 9 years after the Civil Partnerships Act, the coalition government brought in same-sex marriage.
What do Postmodernists believe?
Postmodernists believe that there is no longer one dominant family form (i.e. the nuclear family).
What are the four major features of modern society?
Industrialisation – factories produce material goods in a competitive capitalist marketplace.
Social class is therefore the basic source of difference and inequality in modern societies.
Urbanisation
Centralised government – the government responsible for both the economy and for the welfare of its citizens.
Rational, scientific thinking – tradition, religion and superstition were replaced as major explanations of the state of the world by science and reason.
What do Postmodernists suggest are symptoms of society “fragmenting”?
Work – The nature of work and economic life has changed. Work is no longer dominated by factory production in which thousands of people work alongside each other.
Culture – As our society has grown wealthier, so the mass media and other cultural industries – such as fashion, film, advertising and music – have become increasingly central to how we are socialized and how we organize our lives.
Globalization – The global expansion of transnational companies and brands, and global marketing for cultural forms such as cinema, music and games.
Knowledge – In the postmodern world people have become sceptical, even cynical, about the power of science to change the world,
because many of the world’s problems have been brought about by technology.
Why are is Postmodernist Bernandes critical of the Functionalist view of the family?
They have resulted in more attention being paid to white middle class two-parent families. As a result, alternative types of family have become invisible or have been labelled as anti-social and deviant. Postmodernist Jon Bernardes argues that the functionalist theory of the family paints an over- simplistic and romantic picture of family life in which there is no place for the “anger, resentment, inequality, stress, depression, physical or sexual violence” found in family life in the UK. For example, Bernardes notes that divorce will always be regarded as a social problem by functionalists if we do not recognise that remaining married can be just as problematic for some couples and their families.
What are characteristics of the Postmodern family?
Liberated sexual attitudes – postmodernists argue that in postmodern society women are less likely to view romantic love and therefore marriage as their primary goal. Evidence suggests women are more experienced before settling down for marriage now, with higher expectations in regards to sex, love and equality.
Voluntary childlessness - An increasing number of young women are choosing not to have children – to be childfree as a lifestyle choice because they value the notion of a career and economic independence.
Reproductive technologies - Developments in embryo transplants and in-vitro fertilisation have had important implications for traditional notions of maternal love
Diversity in parenting arrangements - the notion that parenting should be shared with the father and with non-parental care-givers is becoming popular as dual worker families increase in number.
What does Tamara Hareven suggest the life course consists of?
1) Birth
2) Early childhood, e.g. being a baby
3) Infancy, e.g. a toddler learning to walk, talk etc
4)Childhood, e.g. begins with compulsory schooling
5)Adolescence, e.g. being a teenager
6)Young adulthood, i.e. 18-29
7)Adulthood, e.g. 30-50
8)Middle-age, e.g. 51-64
9) Old age, i.e. officially begins with retirement
Hereven notes that these stages may involve distinctly different sets of family interactions and relationships, e.g. getting pregnant whilst a teenager may result in a qualitatively different type of family set-up than getting pregnant after marriage in adulthood.
What do Robert Chester and Jennifer Somerville argue about postmodernist perspectives on the family?
Postmodernism also implies a radical break from modernity but the statistics suggest tradition still dominates. Robert Chester and Jennifer Somerville argue that postmodernist arguments about family diversity are exaggerated, basic features of family life modelled on the heterosexual nuclear family have remained largely unchanged since the 1950s.
For example, in 2017 most couples with children live in nuclear families.
What dooes Langford argue about the Postmodernist perspective on the family?
Some feminists also highlight the persistence of patriarchy even within new forms of families and relationships. For example, Langford argues that men do not emotionally invest in relationships to the same degree as women while Chambers observes that single mothers and lesbians are still condemned by a patriarchal mass media.
What are Murdock and Parsons views on the family?
Murdock (1949) - the family has four main functions that the nuclear family exists in all societies to carry out;
Expressing approved sexuality
Providing stability for reproduction
The primary socialization of children
Economic support (food, shelter)
Parsons (1951) - the families functions are to socialize children into society’s basic norms and values, or cease to exist, and the stabilization of human personalities via the sexual division of labour.
