Families And Social Policy Flashcards
What is China’s one-child policy?
- Government population control policy.
- Women must seek permission to try to become pregnant (often a waiting list).
- Complying results in extra benefits e.g free child healthcare & higher tax allowances.
- An only child gets priority in education and housing.
- Couples who break their agreement to have only 1 child must repay allowances and pay a fine.
- Women face pressure to undergo sterilisation after having their first child.
How has the state affected family life in communist Russia?
- 1980s: series of policies to increase birth rate.
- Restricted contraception & abortion, set up infertility treatment centres, made divorce more difficult, lowered legal age of marriage to 15 & made unmarried adults and childless couples pay an extra 5% income tax.
What was the Nazi family policy?
- 1930s: twofold policy.
On one hand: - Encouraged ‘racially poor’ to breed a ‘master race’.
- Sought to keep women out of the workforce & confine them to ‘children, kitchen & church’ to perform biological role.
Conversely: - The state compulsorily sterilised 375,000 disabled people deemed unfit to breed.
- ‘physical malformation, mental retardation, epilepsy, imbecility, deafness or blindness.
- Many of them were later murdered in concentration camps.
How has the state affected family life in democratic societies?
Some argue in democratic societies e.g Britain, the family is a private sphere of life in which the government doesn’t intervene, expect when things ‘go wrong’ e.g child abuse.
Sociologist argue: even in democratic societies, the states social policies play a very important role in shaping family life.
How do functionalists see society?
Built on harmony and consensus (shared values), and free from major conflicts.
How do functionalists view the role of policies in relation to the family?
Helping families to perform their functions more effectively and make life better for their members.
What are the two main criticisms of the functionalist view of social policy in relation to the family?
- It assumes that all members of the family benefit equally: from social policies. Feminists argue: policies often benefit men at the expense of women.
- It assumes that there is a ‘march of progress’; with social policies steadily making family life better. Marxists: policies can also turn the clock back and reverse progress previously made e.g cutting welfare benefits to poor people.
What is meant by surveillance (Foucault)?
Observing and monitoring. Foucault sees power as not just something held by the government or state, but as diffused throughout society and found within all relationships.
What is meant by the policing of families?
- Social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families.
- Surveillance isn’t targeted equally on all social classes.
In what way does Donzelot’s view of the effect of policy on family life differ from the functionalists’ view?
He sees social policy as a form of state control of the family.
Describe the roles of the adults in the New Right view of the ‘traditional’ nuclear family. How does their view compare to functionalists’?
.
Give three examples if policies that the New Right see as threatening the conventional family and producing social problems.
- Laws making divorce easier to undermine the idea of marriage as a lifelong commitment between a man & a woman.
- The introduction of civil partnerships (and since 2014 marriage) for gay and lesbian couples sends out the message that the state no longer sees heterosexual marriage as superior to other domestic set-ups.
- Tax laws discriminate against conventional families with a sole breadwinner. They cannot transfer the non-working partners tax allowances to the working partner, so they tend to pay more tax than dual-earner couples, each of whom has a tax allowance.
Explain what is meant by the idea that welfare benefits are ‘perverse incentives’.
.
Give two examples of ways in which benefits may act as ‘perverse incentives’.
-
-
Explain one way in which taxes might be used to encourage the traditional nuclear family.
.
