Sociology-Families and Households-Social Policy Flashcards
How can social policy affect families?
The actions and policies of governments can sometimes have profound effects on families and their members. Cross cultural examples from different societies and historical periods can show us some of the more extreme ways in which the state’s policies can affect family life. This can help us to see the relationship between families and social policy in a new light-these examples include: China’s one child policy, communist Romania, Nazi family policy, and democratic societies
How did social policy affect families with china’s one child policy?
In China, the government’s population control policy has aimed to discourage couples from having more than one child. The policy is supervised by workplace family planning committees; women must seek their permission to try to become pregnant, and there is often both a waiting list and a quota for each factory. Couples who comply with the policy get extra benefits, such as free child healthcare and higher tax allowances. An only child will also get priority in education and housing later in life. Couples who break their agreement must repay allowances and pay a fine. Women face pressure to undergo sterilisation after their first child
How did social policy affect families with Communist Romania?
At the opposite extreme to the one-child policy, the former communist government of Romania in the 1980s introduced a series of policies to try to drive up the birth rate, which had been falling as living standards declined. It restricted contraception and abortion, set up infertility treatment centres, made divorce more difficult, lowered the legal age of marriage to 15 and made unmarried adults and childless couples pay an extra 5% income tax
How did social policy affect families with Nazi family policy?
In Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the state pursued a twofold policy. On the one hand, it encouraged the healthy and supposedly ‘racially pure’ to breed a ‘master race’ (eg by restricting access to abortion and contraception). Official policy sought to keep women out of the workforce and confine them to ‘children, kitchen and church’, the better to perform their biological role. On the other hand, the state compulsorily sterilised 375,000 disabled people that it deemed unfit to breed on grounds of ‘physical malformation, mental retardation, epilepsy, imbecility, deafness and blindness’. Many of these people were later murdered in Nazi concentration camps
How has social policy affected families in democratic societies?
By contrast with other extreme examples, some people argue that in democratic societies such as Britain, the family is a private sphere of life in which the government does not intervene, except perhaps when things ‘go wrong’, for example in cases of child abuse. However, sociologists argue that in fact, even in democratic societies, the state’s social policies play a very important role in shaping family life
What are the different perspectives on families and social policy?
Functionalism Donzelot, The New Right, and Feminism
How do functionalists see society, and their social policies?
Functionalists see society as built on harmony and consensus (shared values) and free from major conflicts. They see the state as acting in the interests of society as a while and its social policies as being for the good of all. Functionalists see policies as helping families to perform their functions more effectively and make life better for their members
What does Fletcher argue about social policy?
Argues that the introduction of health, education and housing policies in the years since the industrial revolution has gradually led to the development of a welfare state that supports the family in performing its functions more effectively-eg NHS means with help of doctors, nurses, hospitals and medicines, the family today is better able to take care of its members when they are sick
What are the two main reasons that the functionalist view on social policy has been criticised?
It assumes all members of the family benefit equally from social policies whereas feminists for example argue that policies often benefit men at the expense of women. Also it assumes that there is a ‘march of progress’, with social policies steadily making family life better and better. However, Marxists for example argue that policies can also turn the clock back and reverse progress previously made, for example by cutting welfare benefits to poor families
What is Donzelot’s perspective of family policies?
Offers a very different perspective on the relationship between the family and state policies from that of the functionalists. Rather than a consensus view of policy as benefiting the family, Donzelot has a conflict view of society and he sees policy as a form of state power and control over families
What concept does Donzelot use to explain social policies?
He uses Foucault’s concept of surveillance. Foucault sees power not just as something held by the government or state, but as diffused throughout society and found within all relationships. In particular, Foucault sees professionals such as doctors and social workers as exercising power over their clients by using their expert knowledge to turn them into ‘cases’ to be dealt with
How does Donzelot apply Foucault’s concept of surveillance to the family?
He is interested in how professionals carry out surveillance of families. He argues social workers, health visitors and doctors use their knowledge to control and change families, and he calls this ‘the policing of families’. However surveillance is not targeted equally on all social classes. Poor families are more likely to be seen as ‘problem’ families and as the cause of crime and anti-social behaviour. These are the families that professionals target for ‘improvement’
What does Condry note?
The state may seek to control and regulate family life by imposing compulsory parenting orders through the courts. Parents of young offenders, truants or badly behaved children may be forced to attend parenting class to learn the ‘correct’ way to bring up children
What are Donzelot’s views on the functionalist perspective of social policy?
He rejects the functionalists’ march of progress view that social policy and the professionals who carry it out have created a better, freer or more humane society. Instead, he sees social policy as a form of state control of the family
What is an advantage of Donzelot’s perspective on families and social policy?
By focusing on the micro level of how the ‘caring professions’ act as agents of social control through their surveillance of families, Donzelot shows the importance of professional knowledge as a form of power and control
How has Donzelot’s perspective on families and social policy been criticised?
Marxists and feminists criticise Donzelot for failing to identify clearly who benefits from such policies of surveillance. Marxists argue that social policies generally operate int he interests of the capitalist class, while feminists argue that men are the main beneficiaries
What are the New Right’s main views on family?
They are strongly in favour of the conventional or ‘traditional’ nuclear family based on a married, heterosexual couple, with a division of labour between a male provider and female homemaker. They see this family type as naturally self-reliant and capable of caring and providing for its members, especially the successful socialisation of children
What are the New Right’s views on new family types?
In their view, the changes that have led to greater family diversity, such as increases in divorce, cohabitation, same-sex partnerships and lone parenthood, are threatening the conventional family and producing social problems such as crime and welfare dependency
What are the New Right’s view on families and social policy?
They believe they have encouraged changes in family types and helped to undermine the nuclear family
What does Almond argue?
Laws making divorce easier undermine the idea of marriage as a lifelong commitment between a man and 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 partner’s tax allowances to the working partner, so they tend to pay more tax than dual-earner couples, each of whom has a tax allowance
What else doe the New Right argue, similar to what Almond argues?
They point out that increased rights for unmarried cohabitants, such as adoption rights and succession to council house tenancies and pension rights when a partner dies, begin to make cohabitation and marriage more similar. This sends out the signal that the state does not see marriage as special or better
What does Murray talk about?
New Right commentators such as Murray are particularly critical of welfare policy. In their view, providing ‘generous’ welfare benefits, such as council housing for unmarried teenage mothers and cash payments to support lone parent families, undermines the conventional nuclear family and encourages deviant and dysfunctional family types that harm society
What does Murray argue about the effects welfare benefits?
He argues they offer ‘perverse incentives’-they reward irresponsible/anti-social behaviour. Eg if fathers see the state will maintain their children, some will abandon responsibilities towards their families. Providing council housing for unmarried teenage mothers encourages young girls to become pregnant. Growth of lone parent families, encouraged by generous benefits, means more boys grow up without a male role model and authority figure - this lack of paternal authority is responsible for rising crime rate among young males
For the New Right, how do current social policies on family, then impact society?
Current policies are encouraging a dependency culture, where individuals come to depend on the state to support them and their children rather than being self reliant. This threatens two essential functions that the family fulfils for society: the successful socialisation of the young, and the maintenance of the work ethic among men
