(Soc) Examine the Ways in Which Laws and Social Policies Affect Family Life

So here is my essay on social policy, please be aware it is formed together from the textbook and online resources so the general gist of all this isn't mine. 

At present, in the United Kingdom, the family is a reasonably unregulated institution in comparison to cross-cultural social policies and societies as such as that of China. Both laws and social policies in Britain can either encourage or discourage certain types of families, rather than actively enforcing them like 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 often 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 to have only one child must repay the allowances and pay a fine. Women face pressure to undergo sterilisation after their first child. Britain’s government agencies and institutions only seem to take an active role on policing areas of family life when things are perceived to have gone wrong, such as regulating the fair distribution of assets following the breakdown of a marriage. China’s social policies actively enforces a certain family type therefore preventing any diversity and controls the population.

Most current social policies in the UK come from a New Labour perspective, as a result many of these social policies encourage the existence of the family however not limited to the nuclear family which is advocated by the New Right. An example of this being that New Labour amended a law to facilitate unmarried cohabiting couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, who wished to adopt. Due to the new adapted law they have now obtained the same rights to adopt on a basis that is equivalent to that of a married couple. Not only has this made access to adoption easier for unmarried couples with fertility issues, but it has also provided the greatest change of allowing homosexual couples adopt children which has led to a much more diverse range of families. However, this change has been heavily criticised by New Right thinkers who have claimed that it further undermines the nuclear family by removing the restriction on unmarried couples from adoption children. In addition to this, they additionally claim that children who haven’t been raised in the “natural” set-up provided by the standard nuclear family will as a result be more likely to participate in both anti-social behaviour and criminal activities. The New Right believe that this is as a direct result of the failure of the parents in socialising (the internalisation of social norms) their children correctly.

However, some of the New Labour’s other policies can be much more closely linked to the ideology of the New Right thinkers. One policy that demonstrates this is the reduction of the amount of benefits available to single parent families which can be argued to be in union with the New Right theory that the family is required to be a self-reliant entity and that any benefits offered to single parents offer a “perverse incentive”. This particular benefit cut has effectively made it more difficult for single parents to manage to survive on an economic basis. This is heavily criticised by feminists as clear example of New Right principle of attempting to justify a return to the patriarchal family by forcing women to remain in marriages by making them economically dependent on their husband. It is additionally believed to be at fault by Marxists due to the fact that it only really affects those on a lower income and consequently contradicts the claim that this is a step towards reinstating the nuclear family for everyone in society. Those belonging to the wealthier status in our society would then almost be completely indifferent to this policy, and therefore it operates only to reinforce the ruling class ideology onto the proletariat, whist authorising the bourgeoisie to do as they please, one of the many hypocrisies evident in capitalism.