Examine the ways in which laws and social policies affect family life. Feminism- Society is male dominated.

Policies help oppress women. Gender regimes New Right- The family is self reliant. Men work women care. Social policy should not interfere. It weakens the families self reliance. Charles murray Functionalist- The state acts in the interest of society New Labour- Marriage is good. Couples are best to raise kids. Some interference helps

A Social policy is a set of actions that the government will use to implement its legislation. Social policy and law can have both positive and negative effects on the family. These laws and policies affect the demographics of the family as well as the health, education and socialisation of its members. Some societies use social policy and law to directly change the family to the governments idea of what is correct. For example, in China they have the one child policy which is used to discourage families from having more than one child as they will be fined for doing so. This has lead to an imbalance of the male to female ratio in the country. The Nazi family policy involved restricting abortion and contraception to encourage breeding a master race. Functionalists are consensus theorists and believe that the state acts in favour of the wider society and social policies are good for the whole population. Ronald Fletcher says that the introduction of the NHS and housing policies has had a positive effect on the family and helps the family to perform its functions such as the primary socialisation of children. It could be argued, however, that functionalists wrongly assume that there is a March of progress in our society and that social policy benefits everyone. Feminists such as Elizabeth Bott would argue that it does not positively affect women. The New Right see the traditional nuclear family as self reliant. They believe in the traditional division of labour with men being the bread winners and women being the home-makers. They think that social policy should not interfere with the family as this will affect their self-reliance. They think that social policy such as free housing for young parents will encourage young women to become pregnant and this goes against the new rights views on the nuclear family. Charles Murray said that some social policy, such as generous benefits for lone parents, offer perverse incentives. This means that benefits for lone parents encourages parents to stay single which, to the new right, is unacceptable. The New Right believe that there should be cuts to welfare and tighter restrictions on who can receive benefits. This will reduce taxes, remove some perverse incentives and discourage a dependency culture. Feminists like Diana Leonard would say that the new Right are just trying to encourage a return to the patriarchal family where women are oppressed and subordinate. They also assume that the nuclear family as a natural creation rather than a sociological one. Finally, cutting benefits would lead to poor families becoming even poorer. Feminism is a conflict theory that says that society is patriarchal and that social policy oppresses women and reinforces the view that men are the breadwinners and

women are the home-makers. Social policy does this by reinforcing the idea that the normal family is nuclear. This then disregards the diversity of families in society and benefits only the normal one. For example, maternity leave may benefit women but it also means that they are the ones who have to leave work to bring up the children. This is, however, changing with the introduction of longer paternity leave for fathers. Eileen Drew uses gender regimes to summarise how social policy affects gender equality. Familistic gender regimes are based on the traditional nuclear family. Individualistic gender regimes base family policy on the idea that men and women are equal and should be treated that way. New Labour says that a married couple are the best to bring up a child. This means that the traditional nuclear family is the best for socialisation and upbringing according to New Labour. This draws parallels with the New Rights idea of the perfect family. However, New Labour changed the laws on adoption to give same sex couples and cohabiting partners the same rights as married heterosexual couples. This says that they believe that the childs welfare is more important that the type of family they live in. Marxists, like feminists, are conflict theorists who believe that social policy aids only the rich and powerful bourgeoisie and not the working class proletariat. For example, Donzlot says that policing of families by social workers and doctors etc. is not equal between the classes; poorer families are more likely to be seen as a problem. To conclude, social policy is widely seen as a negative thing from the view of a conflict theorist like Marx and Donzlot. Marxists believe that social policy aids only the rich and the New Right believe that the family should remain self-reliant. In contrast, New Labour and the Functionalists see social policy as an aid to a better life for the family. This essay has summed up the viewpoints of many social perspectives and sociologists opinions on how social policy and law created by the government and local authorities affects the family.