New Right and Postmodernists perspective on family diversity Flashcards
New Rights
-They argue that social policy in the UK has resulted in the decline of the nuclear family
and this has created a range of social problems such as unemployment,
educational underachievement, rising crime rates and antisocial behavior.
-They are similar to functionalists in the sense that they agree that the nuclear family is the best type of family to bring children up in.
-Thy believe in less state intervention in people’s lives - they argue that people should be able to stand on their own
two feet rather than rely on the government to provide goods and
services. New Right thinkers therefore feel that provision of welfare by the state (e.g. health care, benefits, housing, education etc.) is wasteful and encourages a criminal underclass which is dependent on benefits and welfare.
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Why New Rights believe that the family is under threat due to social policies
1)The introduction of equal opportunities and equal pay social policies and laws ;
e.g. Sexual Discrimination Act 1970 and the Equal Pay Act 1975 - which have distracted women from their ‘natural’ careers as mothers. The New Right claim that there have been few tax or benefit policies aimed at encouraging mothers to
stay at home with their children.
According to the New Right, these social policies have also supposedly
created confusion for the modern man and woman in regard to their family roles, leading to general unhappiness and problems such as divorce and a sharp increase in the number of single-parent
families.
It is also suggested by the New Right that working mothers are responsible for social problems such as juvenile delinquency and
anti-social behaviour because children no longer experience long-term nurturing and socialisation from their mothers because
they are out at work. The New Right therefore claim that generations of
children have been psychologically ‘damaged’ by maternal
deprivation.
2)the health policy decision in the late 1960s to let the contraceptive pill be freely available to women on prescription is seen to have undermined the family because it has encouraged sexual freedom and experimentation. Women are supposedly less willing to commit themselves to family life.
3) in the 1960s, the government decriminalised homosexuality –
this form of sexuality is particularly seen by New Right thinkers as a threat to family life. They have opposed all attempts to increase rights for homosexuals especially family rights, e.g. relating to the possibility of homosexuals adopting children, having the same rights as heterosexual married people etc.
4) The Divorce Reform Act (1972) ;
- has resulted in people no longer taking marriage seriously. They argue that the rules for marriage and divorce are now too lax because of this legislation, and that divorce is too easy to obtain. Before this Act was introduced, the divorce rates were fairly low because getting a divorce was both a complex and expensive process. It involved taking a partner to court and ‘proving’ that they were guilty of a ‘matrimonial offence’ such as adultery, physical or mental cruelty etc.
5) Charles Murray (1994) argues that aimed at economically helping poorer couples have created a dependency culture which has encouraged the emergence of a criminal underclass composed of welfare- dependent problem families.
Robert Rector (2014) argues that social policies have encouraged single parenthood at the expense of married parenthood, because the payment of welfare benefits reduces the financial need for marriage.
He notes that less educated mothers in European countries such as the UK are symbolically married to the state and to the taxpayer rather than to the fathers of their children.
Criticisms of New Rights
Rueben Ford and Jane Millar (1998) suggest that the New Right analysis strongly implies that the poverty that single mothers experience is the effect of ‘choosing’ this lifestyle. They argue that the New Right have misinterpreted this relationship. Poverty is a major cause rather than effect of single parenthood. Single women from poor socioeconomic backgrounds living in deprived areas with higher than average rates of unemployment are more likely than others to become single mothers.
Postmodern perspective on family diversity
They do not believe that a single type of family is either ‘dominant’ or the norm. They disagree with functionalists , Marxists and feminists who say that a single theory of family life is possible.
They argue that sociological studies of the family should focus on ‘life courses’
Of individuals rather than family structures.
They way that lives evolve and change as people experience personal events or rites of passage e.g marriage.
Life course analysis Tamara Hareven (2000)
She noted that the life-course is made up of several stages ;
- birth
-Early childhood (being a baby)
-infancy (being a toddler)
-Childhood (beginning with schooling)
-Adolescence (being a teenager)
-Young adulthood (18-29)
-Adulthood (30-50)
-Middle age (51-64)
-Old age
Criticisms of postmodernism
-Postmodernists exaggerate the extent of changes and point out that most people live in conventional types of families for at least parts of their lives.
The nuclear family remains the goal of many
Strengths of postmodernism
-It recognises the many ways people live their lives and it breaks away from a narrow focus of the family to the wider subjects of relationships and personal lives.
