Topic 4 - Social Policy Flashcards
The Comparative View
- China’s one-child policy
- Communist Romania
- Nazi Germany
China’s one-child policy
- Aimed to discourage couples from having more than 1 child
- Superwised by workplace family planning = women seek permission before getting pregnant
- If couples comply they get extra benefits e.g., free healthcare, higher tax allowance, the child gets priority in education and housing
Communist Russia
1980s:
- Restricted contraception and abortion
- Set up infertility treatment centres
- Made divorce more difficult
- Lowered the legal age of marriage to 15
- Unmarried and childless couples = more tax
Nazi Germany
1930s:
- “Racially pure” to breed a “master race”, kept women out of the workplace to better perform their biological roles
- State compulsory sterilised disabled people, later sent to concentration camps
Democratic societies
- Policies = not as extreme
- Britain = family seen as the private sphere of life in which the governemnt does not intervene except when things go wrong, e.g., child abuse
- Democratic societies state policies play a vital role in shaping family life
Perspectives on families and social policy
a) Functionalism
b) DONZELOT: Policing the family
c) The New Right
d) Marxists
e) Feminism
a) Functionalism
- Society = built on harmony and consensus
- State acts on behalf of its member’s best interests
- Policies = good
- FLETCHER introduction of health, education, and housing policies since the industrial revolution = development of a welfare state that supports families
A03 a) Functionalism
- Assumes all members of the family benefit equally… Feminists argue policies often benefit men at the expense of women
- Assumes there has been a march of progress… Marxists would argue policies can turn the clock back and reverse the progress made, e.g., cutting welfare benefits to poor families
b) DONZELOT: Policing the family
- Policies = creates conflict in soxiety and helps the state exert power and control over families
- Policies = allow professionals to carry out surveillance of families
- Social and healthcare workers use their knowledge to control and change families (policing of families)
- Surveillance not targeted equally on families, poor families = problematic and the cause of anti-social behaviour
- State and “caring professionals” as agents of social control
c) The New Right
- Nuclear family is the best for society = self-reliant and capable of caring and providing for its members esp for socialising children
- Policies undermining the nuclear family:
1) Laws making divorce easier
2) Introduction of civil partnerships and same sex marriages
3) Tax laws discriminate conventional families
4) Increasing rights for cohabitating couples
Lone parents, welfare, and the dependancy culture
- MURRAY (TNR) = providing generous welfare benefits undermines the nuclear family/encourages deviant behaviour
- These benefits offer “perverse incentives” = reward irresponsible behaviour:
1) Fathers abandon their responsibilties towards their families
2) Council housing for unmarried mothers promotes young girls to become pregnant
3) Growth of LPF
The New Right solution
- Policy must be changed with cuts in welfare spending and righter restrictions on who is eligable for benefits
- Cutting welfare = reduced taxes = father’s incentive to work and provide for thier families
- Denying council housing to unmarried mothers removes the incentive to become pregnant when young
- Advocate policies to support tradition nuclear family makes absent fathers responsible for their families
A03 c) The New Right
- Feminists: An attempt to return to tratitional patriarchal nuclear family that subordinates women = confined to domestic role
- Wrongly assumes that the nuclear family is natural rather than socially constructed
- Marxists: Cutting benefits takes away from poor fa,ilies and rive them even further into poverty
- Ignores policies that support the nuclear family
The New Right’s influence on policies
1) Conservative Governemnts 1979-1997
2) New Labour Governments 1997-2010
3) The Coalition Government 2010-2015
1) Conservative Governemnts 1979-1997
Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government:
- Banned the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities, inclusing ban on teaching
- Defined divorce as a social problem = emphasises the importance of continued support by both parents = Child Support Agency
- Made divorce easier and gave children born outside of marriage the same as those born inside of a marriage
