Traditional Views on the Function of the Family

1. Traditional Views on the Function of the Family The ‘perfect Kelloggs family’ and the disastrous ‘Simpsons’ have one thing in common; they represent the only functional solution to child-rearing.

2. Social Trends : Marriage & Divorce after the 1969 Act • Divorce rate p/1000: 1961-2, 1971-6, 1990-13 • Divorces per year have doubled • 40% of marriages fail, 75% involving kids • Marriage rate p/1000 has halved • Re-Marriage rate p/1000 has fallen • Cohabitation has doubled (30% of 20-somethings) • Births to unmarried mums up from 8% > 30% • 1998 44,000 pregnancies 16-18, 8000 under 16 (3% of all unmarried mums are teenagers)

3. Social Trends: Marriage, Divorce & Remarriage

5. General Household Survey 1 Single Parenthood 2002/3 • 1961 2% of households SP > 2002 8% SP • 1972 7% of children had SP > 2002 21% SP • 2003 25% of households + dependent kids = SP • 88% of kids with a SP live with their mum. • Single Parent Mothers in 2003: 45% = unmarried mum [ a big increase since 1972] • 32% = divorced mum • 18% = separated lone mum • 5% = widowed lone mother

6. General Household Survey 2 Single Parenthood 2002/3 • 15% of SP’s stop being lone parents each year and set up home with a new partner. • 55% of SP are on Income Support, compared to 4% of couples with dependent children. • 61% of lone-parent families are said to be below the poverty line. • Despite the CSA, 70% of non-resident parents linked to a SP, made no contribution towards the cost of raising their children: either because they had deserted the family or because they were themselves unemployed or on low incomes.

7. British Social Attitudes Survey:Single Parenthood 2000 • Of 75-85 yr olds, 90% thought people who wanted children should get married, but only 30% of those under 25 agreed with this. • 82% of people disapproved of teen pregnancies. • 83% thought bringing up a child on her own was too hard for a single teenager. • 42% thought bringing up a child on her own was too hard for a single woman. • Very few illegitimate births are planned > single parenthood is not seen as desirable, by many. • Most single parents had hoped for a partner.

8. Traditional views on the function of the Family • The Kelloggs or Simpsons Family is seen by Functionalists as a Universal Solution to the problem of raising and socialising Human children • Nuclear Families have adapted to meet the needs of post-Industrial Societies • The New Right considers the ‘diversity’ of modern families a threat to our way of life.

9. Murdock: Social Structure 1949 • Family is a Universal Solution to the need to protect and socialise children • The Family is a basic economic unit • The Nuclear Family is the product of industrialisation, because societies need a mobile labour force • This is a Functionalist & Structuralist view that assumes people are shaped by Society

10. Talcott Parsons: The Social System 1951 • The Family socialises children and stabilises (supports) the personalities of the adults, giving order and meaning to their lives: the ‘warm bath’. • As societies become more complex, so members specialise in different roles. • Gender roles are specialised: women nurture the children (Expressive), men provide (Instrumental) • This is Functionalist, but also uses the Sociobiological argument that the Nuclear Family (Patriarchal in form) is somehow ‘natural’

11. Talcott Parsons: Socialisation & Interaction 1955 • Industrialisation and urbanisation caused a change from Nuclear to Extended families • A mobile labour force was needed • Family no longer defined status/class: people could ‘improve’ themselves = social mobility • Kinship declined in importance also because professionals replaced kin, in providing assistance: in sickness, unemployment, for childcare or for education.

12. Berger: Marriage & social construction of reality 1964 • The meaning of ‘Family’ is constructed from the meanings that social actors give to their interactions with other social members • Actors use the Family to make sense of their world; this is essential for avoiding anomie (feeling of not belonging) or alienation (feeling of not having a stake in Society) • Families provide a sense of having responsibilities and guidelines (norms) for behaviour

13. Berger: War over the Family 1983 • Supported the New Right move to defend ‘Family Values’ and traditional morality • Attacked socialist, collective, approaches to child-rearing as a failure (Soviet) or as exaggerated (Kibbutz) • Children’s homes were the worst way to bring up children: abuse,crime,drugs etc. • Family is best, don’t knock it

14. Mount: The Subversive Family 1982 • New Right / Functionalist view that the Family is a social institution that works, because it conforms to human nature. This is the Familial ideology. • Caring for children is the duty and destiny of women; women shouldn’t be made to feel inferior because they choose to be stay-at-home mothers • Diversity, divorce and women’s liberation are covers for a new selfishness & immorality • Dysfunctional families weaken Society

15. Abbot & Wallace 1992:The New Right & the Family • 1980’s reaction against diversity, high taxation and youth crime: Pro-Family, Pro-Life, Catholic, Conventional,C.of E,, Evangelical, Conservative, Muslim, Fundamentalist, UK [Mrs Thatcher 1979-90 & USA [President Reagan 1981-1989]. • Labour’s socialist policies were deliberately undermining the family: high taxes forced more mothers to work, social security payments to single mothers encouraged dysfunctional families to raise dysfunctional children, homosexuality had been encouraged & legalised, personal responsibility for caring for one’s children had been replaced by a ‘leave it to the State’ attitude.

16. Lister 1996: Back to the Family • John Major [1990-1997] carried on the Thatcher approach to the Family, until wrecked by scandal. • A Family minister, raised Child benefit, Child Support Agency, Adoption privileged married couples over partners or gays, ‘Back to Basics’ campaign to restore family values, criticism of lone-mothers as irresponsible scroungers, • The Children’s Act 1989 & the Family Law Act 1996 rejected the ‘clean break’ ideal for divorces. Instead it was presumed that divorce was a problem for children & that both parents should still share all of the responsibility for raising them.

17. Silva & Smart 1999: The New Practices & Policies of Family Life 1 • Silva & Smart argue that Blair’s New Labour [1997>] have continued the emphasis on family values & encouraging conventional family life. • Blair argues that family life is the foundation of society. The government is not preaching about individual morality, but simply addressing a major cause of social problems: • IE the effect of divorce on children, teenage pregnancies, lack of care for the elderly, poor parental role models, truancy, underachievement in school and a generalised unhappiness in Society.

18. Silva & Smart 1999: The New Practices & Policies of Family Life 2 • 1998 the Supporting Families Green Paper and The National Family & Parenting Institute were aimed to provide better information & services for families. Critics point out that Blair means an idealised conventional family, like the perfect ‘1st family’ of Tony and Cherie. • It has suggested that: health visitors should be more involved; registrars should give counselling before marriage; more counselling before divorce; longer paid maternity leave; help with childcare costs for lone mums [The New Deal] & low-income families [ Working Families Tax Credits] ; pre-nuptial agreements binding.

19. John Redwood: Conservative Minister under Thatcher 1 • Too many dysfunctional families : of 1m+ single parent families 55% were on benefits. • 70% of lone parents received no support from the father, who left things to the State > Child Support Agency created to find fathers. • Young girls got pregnant to jump the housing queues and avoid work • People gave excuses for their bad behaviour, but the poor were often depraved, not deprived • Single parents were unnatural and damaged their children > crime & failure at school.

20. John Redwood: Conservative Minister under Thatcher 2 • The New Right urged the common sense view that single Parents could not give their children enough time and that the children must suffer as a result. • Mary McIntosh, in Social Anxieties about Lone Motherhood 1996, criticised Redwood for yielding to moral panics in the media. She denied that single parents were second rate parents or that the rise in SP families could be linked to higher truancy levels, youth crime, underachievement or teenage pregnancies. Evidence for girls deliberately getting pregnant in order to avoid work & jump the housing queues was very rare.

21. New Labour & The Welfare Dependency of Single Parents 1 • Lone parents, without substantial assistance from an ex-partner, are caught in a poverty trap: childcare almost equals their wage and so they cannot work. • Labour do not officially accept Murray’s thesis [that welfare payments are creating an underclass of dependent, unemployed, social-security scrounger]. • BUT: Most single parents are on benefits, even when in work. • Only 44% of single parent mothers are in paid employment and many of those are part time.

22. New Labour & The Welfare Dependency of Single Parents 2 • Blair was influenced by President Clinton & the Democratic Party in the USA, who aimed to replace welfare with workfare. • It is alleged, in Labour’s ‘Supporting Families’ Green Paper 1998, that 85% of SP mothers would like to get into full-time employment. • Labour’s ‘New Deal for Lone Parents’ does aim to use help with childcare to get single parent mothers back into the world of work. • The key step here was to offer incentives for younger SP mothers to complete their education, so that they could become employable.

23. New Labour & The WelfareDependency of Single Parents 3 : A Critique • Allan & Crow, in Families, Households and Society 2001: argued that there was no evidence that SP had developed sub-cultural values, in the way that Murray’s ‘Underclass Thesis’ suggested. • Allan & Crow pointed out that most SP aspire to find a life partner, to share their experience of parenting. They estimate [how?] that the average experience of being a SP only lasts 5 years. • The CSA was counter productive, because mothers lost Income Support, if they received maintenance - so there was no incentive for Fathers to contribute. 61% of SP were in poverty.

24. New Labour & The WelfareDependency of Single Parents 4 : A Critique • Perry [Institute of Housing] found no evidence that single parents were being given priority over homeless couples, for local authority housing. • Cashmore, in Rewriting the Script 1985, found no evidence that children suffered psychologically from having only one parent. It was the quality of the parenting that mattered. Lone parents didn’t need the missing partner so much as the partner’s income. The critical variable was poverty, not being a SP. [BUT:Morgan, in Farewell to the Family 1995, cautioned that we do not yet know enough about the effects on kids, of being brought up by a lone parent.]