FAMILIES AND SOCIAL POLICY

Question 1

China’s one-child policy

Answer 1

• For control of population
• women must seek permission to be pregnant, waiting list
  = get benefits

If they don’t

• get fine
• undergo sterilisation after their first child

Question 2

Communist Romania

Answer 2

Increase birth rates:

• restrict contraceptions & abortion
• made divorce more difficult
• lowered legal age of marriage to 15
• unmarried adults and childless couple pay 5% extra tax

Question 3

Nazi family policy

Answer 3

• ‘racially pure’ and ‘master race’ = restricted abortion and contraception
• kept women to ‘children, kitchen and church’
• sterilised 375,000 disabled people, deemed to be unfit to breed = nazi concentration camps

Question 4

Democratic society

Answer 4

The family is a private sphere of life

- government doesn’t intervene unless something ‘goes wrong’ (child abuse).

Question 5

Functionalism (bore on policies)

Answer 5

• believe it’s good, helps families
• help perform their function, better the life of the members
• consensus

Question 6

Donzelot

Policies

Answer 6

• policies are a way for the state to control the family

- police the family through Doctors, social services …

Question 7

NR perspective on policies

Answer 7

Bad, threading the conventional family (nuclear family) and produces social problems (eg welfare and crime)

Question 8

What does Murray say about ‘perverse incentives’?

Answer 8

• providing houses for pregnant teenagers = encourages young girls
• father will abandon their role as policies help
• growth of lone parents families

Question 9

NR solutions to policies

Answer 9

Change them:

• cut welfare
• deny council housing
• create policies to support the nuclear family

Question 10

Feminists view of policies

Answer 10

Policies follow a nuclear and patriarchal nuclear family = creates a SFP
Eg:
Tax and benefits policies assume husbands are man wage earners
Childcare
Care for the sick and elderly

Question 11

Gender regime

DREW (1995)

Answer 11

How social policies in different countries can either encourage or discourage gender equality int be family and work

• familistic gender regimes : replying on family as there is little state welfare (gender roles - women home & male breadwinner)
• individualistic gender regimes : equal policies for husbands and wives as they SHOULD BE TREATED THE SAME - separate benefits, less dependant on husbands for finance

Question 12

Familistic and individualistic gender regimes

Answer 12

• familistic gender regimes : replying on family as there is little state welfare
• individual gender regimes : equal policies for husbands and wives - separate benefits, less dependant on husbands for finance

Question 13

3 policies that threat the family - NR perspective

Answer 13

• laws making divorce easier
• civil partnerships (gay and lesbian)
• tax laws that discriminate again the conventional family