Category: Social Policies
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The Handmaid’s Tale – Possible in Real Life?
The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood in 1985. This might be a novel, but it’s a useful way to introduce social policy and the family! It’s also an example of a type of secondary qualitative data! The novel is set in the United States and imagines a future where the…
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Social Policy and the family in Global Context
How do policies on family life vary from country to country? This post explores some of the cross national variations in policies on the following aspects of family life: Marriage Divorce Benefits for single parents Maternity and paternity pay Gay marriage This post should be relevant to the social policies topic within the A-level sociology…
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How does social policy affect family life – Summary Grid
A summary grid of how five social policies might affect different aspects of family life. Designed to help students revise for A-level sociology – the families and households topic. Picture below and then text version after! Policy First Thoughts – How might this policy affect family life in the UK? More specifically will this support…
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Sociological Perspectives on ‘Renting a Womb’
Kim Kardashian and Kayne West are apparently expecting a fourth child, employing a surrogate mother to carry their fertilised eggs. This will be the second surrogate child, following the birth of their first surrogate child, ‘Chicago’, born in January 2018. Paying someone to be a surrogate mother, or ‘renting a womb’ is legal in the…
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£100 Million Extra to Combat Homelessness – Simply not Good Enough?
The British government recently announced an additional £100 million of funding to tackle chronic homelessness in Britain. Chronic homelessness means those sleeping rough on the streets, rather than much larger numbers of invisible homeless: consisting of people in temporary accommodation or sleeping on friends’ couches. The additional funding will pay for a three pronged ‘attack’…
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Nudge Politics: a sociological analysis
‘nudge politics’ involves governments implementing small social policy measures to help people make the ‘right decisions’. This post considers some of the pros and cons of this type of social policy agenda.
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Russell Brand’s Wedding Present for Harry and Meghan
A Windsor counsellor recently suggested that the homeless of Windsor should be cleared off the streets in time for Harry and Meghan’s wedding. One person (probably among many others) that’s not happy about this is Russell Brand, who pointed out that yet again it’s the marginalised and powerless who are being made to suffer so…
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Environmental Crime Prevention – Definition, Examples and Evaluation
Environmental Crime Prevention strategies include formal and informal social control measures which try to clamp down on anti-social behaviour and prevent an area from deteriorating. They emphasises the role of formal control measures (the police) much more than situational crime prevention theory. Examples, some of which are dealt with below, include Zero Tolerance Policing, ASBOs,…
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Sociological Perspectives applied to Social Policy
Social policy refers to the actions governments take in order to influence society, or to the actions opposition parties and ‘social movements’ (Marxism and Feminism) propose to do if they were to gain power. The barriers to certain social policies getting implemented Electoral popularity Ideological preferences of governments Globalisation Cost/ Funding Positivism applied to social…
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Social Policy and The Family – Topic Overview
Families and Households – Topic 6 – Social Policy Overview of the topic You need to be able to assess a range of policies using three key perspectives • The New Right • New Labour • Feminism (Liberal and Radical) Some of the policies you need to know about – • Changes to the Divorce…
