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 majority of women have been rendered infertile because of environmental toxins, and the few women left who are fertile and able to bare children have become ‘handmaids’.

‘Handmaids’ are given to elite families, required to have ritualistic sex with the male heads of households so that they can bear the families children.

The country is run by a totalitarian state (called ‘Gillead’) which subscribes to a conservative christian ideology and maintains tight control over many aspects of people’s lives, but especially the Handmaids – these are brought up in ‘convent like’ schools, and educated into their role as ‘breeders’ – they effectively get passed around from elite family to elite family to bear multiple children for them.

The novel is told through the eyes of the main character, Offred. What is particularly bleak is that Offred remembers life before Gilead, when things were relatively normal – declining fertility rates eventually lead to a slide into this totatlitarian control over women.

The novel is nicely summarized in the video below.


You can also watch the TV adaptation on More 4 here.

Social Policy and the Family in the Handmaid’s Tale

Government policy towards families is extremely controlling of women in htis novel. The Gilead Theocratic State has near total control over women’s reproduction – fertile women effectively have no right to control their own fertility – that right is given to the elite families.

Fertile women also have no right over their children, these are given away to the families the Handmaid belongs to.

Could this level of control over women happen in real life?

Atwood refers to her novel as ‘speculative fiction’ – a situation which could happen in the future.

The book was a commentary on the political and social climate of the United States in the 1980s, with the widespread embrace of conservatism, as evidenced by the election of Ronald Reagan as president, the increasing power of the Christian right and its powerful lobbying organisations such as the ‘Moral Majority’ and ‘Focus on the Family’, as well as the rise of televangelism.

Commentators such as Joyce Carol Oates and English professor SC Neuman have suggested that the book is a Feminist crititique of the attempted restriction of women’s reproductive rights which various Christian Fundamentalist lobby groups were trying to bring into law – such as giving civil rights protections to foetuses, which would have effectively made abortion illegal.

Atwood herself says that the Handmaid’s Tale was inspired by two real world social polices:

  • Nicolai Ceausescu’s preoccupation with boosting female birth rates in Romania, which led to the policing of pregnant women and the banning of abortion and birth control
  • The idea of ‘giving’ the offspring of lower classes to the ruling class came from Argentina, where a military junta seized power in 1976, subsequently ‘disappearing’ up to 500 children and placing them with selected leaders.

The Handmaid’s Tale: Even more relevant today?

The handmaid’s tale might be even more relvant today given the recent shift in US politics with the election of Donald Trump dovetailing with fears of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies and his vice president’s anti-gay and anti-abortion beliefs.

Handmaid costumes even became common at protests of laws intended to limit women’s reproductive freedom.

Sources: Some of this post was adapted from this blog post.

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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 families and households module, and there’s also some possible relevance to the religion module too, as some of the variations in family-policies are due to religious traditions.

International Variations in Marriage

Marriage policy seems to be the one which varies least – the majority of countries have 16 as the lowest legal age for marriage, with a few countries having set the age at 15.

There seems to be a problem (from the Western perspective) in Iran which has a policy of allowing temporary marriages – which several families use to marry off children much younger than 16 years of age.

Iran seems to be an issue!

Source: Wikipedia

International variations in Divorce Law

The Philippines remains the only country on earth where divorce is illegal

The worst affected people here are the victims of domestic violence, who are mainly female, who can only escape an abusive marriage through a legal separation, a status which prevents them from remarrying should they so wish.

Japan is also an interesting case in relation to equality, because women have to wait six months after divorce to get remarried, whereas men can get remarried immediately after a divorce.

(source)

International variations in Maternity and Paternity Pay

There is significant variation across the developed world in the number of weeks of full-time paid maternity and paternity leave new mothers and fathers are entitled to – ranging from over 80 weeks to less than 10 weeks – and in the case of the United States of America, women are entitled to no weeks of mandatory paid maternity leave at the Federal level – that’s left to individual states and employers.

NB – with 12 weeks of full maternity pay and only 2 paid weeks for paternity, the UK comes very near the bottom for its quality of state support for new parents.

Source: Unicef: Are the World’s Richest Countries Family Friendly?

International variations in Gay Marriage

30 countries allow same sex marriage

72 Countries still have laws against gay relationships

NB: The above map is taken from a blog called ’76 crimes’ – 76 must have been the number of countries where there were laws against homosexuality at the time the blog was initially set up – however now there are only 72 countries.

I guess this shows progress, it also shows you how not to name a blog!

Sources:

International Variations in Child Benefit

Most Northern European countries pay parents for having children, through ‘universal child benefit’ – parents get paid no matter what their income. Payments vary from around $2000 in France to over $8000 in Luxembourg.

The United Kingdom is one of the few countries which means-tests its child benefit, so higher income households do not get it.

Most less developed countries such as the United States have no child benefit allowance for new parents.

Source: Vox

Some Questions to consider:

  • To what extent do family policies vary from country to country?
  • Which countries have the most ‘progressive policies’? (You’ll need to say what you mean by progressive!)
  • Which countries have social policies which are the most oppressive to women and children?
  • Why do policies vary from country to country?

How does social policy affect family life – Summary Grid

A summary grid of how twelve social policies might affect different aspects of family life from 1969 to 2024.

Some of the different aspects of family life you should consider include:

  • the effects on marriage, divorce and family diversity.
  • Equality between men and women in relationships.
  • The effects on children.
  • Whether the policy supports or undermines the traditional nuclear family.

These grids are designed to help students revise for A-level sociology – the families and households topic.

The main post covering the details of these polices is here: social policy and the family.

Social policy and the family 1969 – 2004

summary grid of how social policy affects family life 2013 to 2024.

Social Policy and the family summary grid part 1

POLICYHow might this affect family life?Traditional Nuclear family?
1969 Divorce ActRapid increase in divorce. Subsequent increase in single person, single parent and stepfamily households.Undermined
1975 Employment Protection ActIncrease in maternity pay should = increase in children. Larger family sizes.Undermined traditional gender roles.
1974 Child Benefits ActIncrease in family size.Increase in lone parent families.Undermined
1998 change to child benefits= Abolition of 50p extra lone parents. Reduction in number of lone parent families.Supported
2005 Adoption ActIncrease in same-sex familiesUndermined traditional gender roles.
2004 Civil Partnership ActIncrease in legally recognised same sex partnerships. More openly visible same-sex relationships.Undermined traditional gender roles.

Social policy and the family 2013-2024

summary grid of how social policy affects family life 2013 to 2024.

Social Policy and the family summary grid part 2

POLICYHow does this affect family life?Pro Nuclear family?
2013: Child Benefit means tested > £60KNo child benefit for those with over £60K. Possible reduction in larger families.Neutral
2013 Paternity ActGreater equality between men and women. Increase in number of men being stay at home parents.Undermined traditional gender roles.
2015 Shared Parental Leave
2017: 2 child tax credit policy= no extra benefit after 2nd child. Decrease in larger families.Neutral
2022 Marriage Age Raised from 16 to 18.Reduction in forced teenage marriages.Neutral
2024: 15 hours free childcare for children from 9 monthsShould mean increase in gender equality as women are the main child carers. Might increase family size.Undermines traditional gender roles.

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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 United States, but in the United Kingdom, surrogacy is legal, but parents are only allowed to pay the surrogate expenses related to the pregnancy, rather than paying them a fee for actually carrying the child.

The reason Kim Kardashian and Kayne West have opted for surrogates recently is because Kim has a medical condition which means that becoming pregnant again carries a higher than usual risk of her dying, so this isn’t just a lifestyle choice, but an interesting ethical/ sociological question is whether or not paid for surrogacy should be legal in the U.K. (NB – there’s a chance that it will be, as the surrogacy law is currently under review.

This topic is clearly relevant to families and households and especially social policy, and it’s quite useful to use it to explore different Feminist perspectives on the family….

Liberal Feminism

From a liberal feminist point of view, renting a womb should be acceptable because it would enable career-women to avoid taking time off work to pregnancy and child birth, and thus prevent the kind of career-breaks which put them at a disadvantage to men.

In fact, as far as the couple hiring the surrogate are concerned, this puts them on an entirely equal footing in relation to the new baby, meaning that it would be practically possible for them to share maternity/ paternity leave equally, rather than it ‘making sense’ for the woman to carry on taking time off after she’s done so in order to give birth.

Paid for surrogacy also provides an economic opportunity for the surrogate mothers, an opportunity only available to women.

Marxist Feminism

From a marxist feminist point of view renting a womb is kind of paying women for their labour in one sense, however it’s a long way off providing women a wage for ‘traditionally women’s work’ within the family, such as child care and domestic labour.

Ultimately renting a womb does little to address economic inequality between men and women because it’s only available to wealthier couples, meanwhile on the supply side of the rent a womb industry the only women likely to enter into a surrogacy contract are those that are financially desperate, i.e. they have no other means to make money.

Radical Feminism

From a radical feminist perspective renting a womb does nothing to combat patriarchy more generally. If paid for surrogacy was made legal in the UK, the only consequence would be to give wealthy couples the freedom to pay poor women to carry their children for 9 months.

This does nothing to combat more serious issues such as violence against women.

In conclusion…

While it’s an interesting phenomenon, renting a womb, rather than just voluntary surrogacy, will probably do very little to further the goal of female empowerment. However, it will obviously be of benefit to potentially millions of couples (in the long term) who are unable to have children.

£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’ on homelessness:

  • £50 million for houses to be built outside of London, for people currently ready to move on from hostels
  • £30 million for mental health support for those sleeping rough.
  • Further funding to help people move on from prison into secure accommodation.

There is also funding available to provide more information and support to help those on the streets navigate their way out of homelessness, as well as the promise of research into the nature and extent of LGBT homelessness, currently a very under-researched area.

How effective is this social policy likely to be in combating homelessness?

Probably highly ineffective…

  • That funding is over 10 years – to 2027. There are an estimated 4751 people currently sleeping rough on any given night. If you divide £100 million by that figure, and then by 10 (10 years), the government is only committing an additional £2000 per person per year to combating homelessness. This doesn’t sound like a huge amount of money compared to the cost of housing, for example.
  • We have to understand this ‘additional funding’ in the context of the wider Tory cuts since 2010 – which have been linked to the increase in homelessness this decade…. 169% increase since 2010.
  • Finally, this policy does nothing to combat the much more widespread problem of households living in temporary accommodation -of which there are nearly 80, 000, again a figure which has increased under the Tory government since 2010.

In Conclusion…..

Maybe this is more about creating some positive news for the government rather than it being any serious attempt at combating homelessness.. £100 million is nice round, easy soundbite type of figure, yet in the grand scheme of what’s needed to tackle social problems, it is almost certainly insufficient to make a real difference to a significant number of people.

Image Source

Homeless

 

 

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.

It’s been 10 years since economist Richer Thaler and law professor Cass Sunstein published ‘Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Hapiness‘.

Nudge book.jpgThe idea behind ‘Nudge’ was that by exploiting traits of ‘human nature’ such as our tendencies to put of making decisions, or to give into peer pressure, it was possible to ‘nudge’ people into making certain decisions.

10 years on, it seems that government all over the world have applied ‘nudge theory’ to achieve their desired outcome. They have managed to implement some relatively ‘small scale’ social policies and make huge savings at little cost to the public purse.

In the U.K. for example, David Cameron set up the Behavourial Insights Team (or Nudge Unit) which seems to have had some remarkable successes. For example:

  • Reminder letters telling people that most of their neighbours have already paid their taxes have boosted tax receipts. This was designed to appeal to the ‘heard instinct’.
  • The unit boosted tax returns from the top 1% (those owing more than £30K) from 39% to 47%. To do so they changed their punitive letter to one reminding them of the good paying taxes can do.
  • Sending encouraging text messages to pupils resitting GCSEs has boosted exam results. This appeals to the well-recognised fact that people respond better to praise.
  • Sending text messages to jobseekers reminding them of job interviews signed off with ‘good luck’ has reduced the number of missed interviews.

As with so many public-policy initiatives these days, the Behavourial Insights Team is set up as a private venture, and it now makes its money selling its ‘nudge policy’ ideas to government departments around the world.

The Limitations of Nudge Politics 

Methodologically speaking there are a at least three fairly standard problems:

Firstly, the UK’s nudge unit hasn’t been in place long enough to establish whether these are long-term, ’embedded success’.

Secondly, we don’t really know why ‘nudge actions’ work. The data suggests a correlation between small changes in how letters are worded and so on and behaviour, but we don’t really know the ‘why’ of what’s going on.

Thirdly, I’m fairly sure there aren’t that many controlled trials out there which have been done to really verify the success of some of these policies.

Theoretically there are also quite a few problems:

The book and the ‘team’ above both talk in terms of ‘nudging’ people into making the ‘right decisions’… but who decides what is right? This theory ignores questions of power.

It also could be used towards very negative ends… in fact I think we’ve already seen that with the whole Brexit and Trump votes….. I’m sure those campaigns used nudge theory to manipulate people’s voting outcomes. It doesn’t take a massive swing to alter political outcomes today after all!

Finally, I cannot see how you are going to be able to ‘nudge’ people into making drastic changes to save the planet for example: I can’t imagine the government changing the message on its next round of car tax renewal letters to include messages such as: ‘have you ever thought about giving up the car and just walking everywhere instead? If you did so, the planet might stand a chance of surviving!’.

Final thoughts: the age of the ‘nudge’?

I think this book and this type of ‘steering politics’ are very reflective of the age we live in. (The whole theory is kind of like a micro-version of Anthony Giddens’ ‘steering the juggernaut’ theory.) This is policy-set very much favoured to career politicians and bureaucrats who would rather focus on ‘pragmatic politics’. It’s kind of like what realism is to Marxism in criminology theory: not interested in the ‘big questions’.

I just cannot see how this kind of politics is going to help us move towards making the kind of drastic social changes that are probably going to be required to tackle the biggest problems of our times: global warming, militarism, inequality, refugees for example.

Relevance to A-level sociology

The most obvious relevance is to the social policy aspect of the theory and methods specification.

Find out more…

Image sources 

Nudge book cover

This post will also be published to the steem blockchain. 

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 that the elite can have a ‘jolly nice time’.

He outlines his views in this brief, 5 minute video clip:

One of this suggestions is that Slough Council should hand over one its buildings to SHOC ‘Slough Homeless Our Concern’, so at least there is some real, tangible, extra support being made available for the homeless in the area.

You can sign an online petition in support of the idea here>

Relevance to A level sociology

I thought this was a cheeky little example to highlight how the marginalised get treated in this country, also illustrates elements of the social construction of crime – in that ‘homelessness’ becomes more of a problem when the context (the impending wedding) approaches.

Also – here we have celebrity Russell Brand, a ‘moral entrepreneur’ spearheading a very specific, niche, social policy campaign (/suggested intervention) via his YouTube channel – there’s something very postmodern about all of this…

Environmental Crime Prevention Strategies

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, curfews, street drinking bans, dispersal orders and the three strikes rule in America.

These strategies are associated with Right Realism and are based on Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows Theory – the idea signs of physical disorder give off the message that there is low informal social control which attracts criminals and increases the crime rate.

Zero Tolerance Policing

zero tolerance policing

Zero Tolerance Policing involves the police strictly enforcing every facet of law, including paying particular attention to minor activities such as littering, begging, graffiti and other forms of antisocial behaviour. It actually involves giving the police less freedom to use discretion – under Zero Tolerance policy, the police are obliged to hand out strict penalties for criminal activity.

The best known example of Zero Tolerance Policy was its adoption in New York City in 1994. At that time, the city was in the grip of a crack-cocaine epidemic and suffered high levels of antisocial and violent crime. Within a few years of Zero Tolerance, however, crime had dropped from between 30 – 50%. For an overview of ZT in New York and criticisms see this video (and love the ‘tache). 

In the UK Zero-tolerance policing allegedly slashed crime in Liverpool, a city historically blighted by antisocial behaviour and violent assaults, following its introduction in 2005. Overall recorded crime fell by 25.7 per cent in the three years to 2008 with violent crime falling by 38%.

It was not only the likes of drug dealers and burglars who were targeted. Boys kicking footballs against an old lady’s fence, litterbugs and graffiti louts were also on the police’s radar, and twice a month hundreds of officers flooded the streets to hunt suspects who had jumped bail or those wanted for a particular kind of offence.

Zero Tolerance Policing is still used today in Britain. For example, the Berkshire police adopted a Zero Tolerance approach to knife crime in Slough in 2022, following a 21 year old dying in a knife attack. This is part of a broader Zero Tolerance approach to knife crime rolled out as Operation Deter from Thames Valley policing as a whole.

Antisocial Behaviour Orders

ASBOs are one of the best known crime control methods in the UK – they’re probably best described as bring related to Zero Tolerance techniques – in that you can get an ASBO for antisocial rather than criminal behaviour, and go to jail if you breach it, thus they police minor acts of deviance, although they’re not a perfect fit as the police have little to do with imposing them – that’s down to the local magistrate.

ASBO

Antisocial Behaviour Orders were introduced in 1998 in order to correct minor acts of deviance which would not ordinarily warrant criminal prosecution. Anyone over the age of 10 can receive an Antisocial Behaviour Order, and about half of them have been handed out to 10-17 year olds  or’juveniles.

(In 2014 ASBOs were replaced by Criminal Behaviour Orders (CBOs), but more on those later.)

According to the gov.uk website ‘behaving antisocially includes:

  • drunken or threatening behaviour
  • vandalism and graffiti
  • playing loud music at night

Getting an ASBO means you won’t be allowed to do certain things, such as:

  • going to a particular place, eg your local town centre
  • spending time with people who are known as trouble-makers
  • drinking in the street’

25000 Antisocial Behaviour Orders were administered between the year of their introduction in 1999 and the end of 2013, but how effective were they at reducing and controlling deviant behaviour?

Some (relatively) famous case studies of recent ASBO recipients

In 2013 the so called ‘Naked Rambler‘ received an ASBO stipulating that he had to cover his genitalia and buttocks when he appeared in public, apart from in a changing room. The 53 year old was jailed for 11 months, after he defied the banning order.

naked rambler

In 2014 Jordan Horner, 20, a Muslim convert from northeast London was ordered to stop preaching in public,as part of a campaign for a sharia state in Britain.

muslim ASBO
Jordan Horner

Anti Social Behaviour Orders have been replaced with a wider range of public order control measures including:

  • Criminal Behaviour Orders
  • Community Prevention Orders
  • Public Space Protection Orders.

Criticisms of Environmental Crime Prevention Strategies

  • Zero Tolerance Policing in New York resulted in a lot more people being arrested for possession of marijuana – 25 000 a year by 2012 (one every ten minutes) – some of those people lost their jobs or rental houses as a result (the human cost of Zero Tolerance)
  • ASBOs give people a criminal record for not actually doing anything criminal – You could (past tense!) get an ASBO for being loud, which isn’t in itself criminal, and then go to jail for breaching the ASBO – by being loud again.
  • Zero Tolerance methods are not necessary – As the video above points out, despite the claims of the right wing governments who implement them, crime has gone down in cities in the US and the UK without the widespread use of Zero Tolerance techniques. This excellent article points out that ZT was never adopted widely in the UK or the Netherlands but both countries have witnessed a decline in crime in recent years. The simple truth is that crime has been going down for other reasons, ZT policing has little to do with this.
  • It creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – ‘If police concentrate their patrols in a certain area and assume every young man they see is a potential or probable criminal, they will conduct more searches — and make more arrests. Which means a high percentage of young men in that neighborhood will have police records. Which, in turn, provides a statistical justification for continued hyper-aggressive police ­tactics.’ (It’s time to rethink ZTP).
  • It might be racist – the above two articles also deal with the fact that somewhere in the region of 85% of people dealt with under Zero Tolerance in New York were/ are black or Hispanic.

Sources and Signposting

This material is relevant to the Crime and Deviance module within A-level sociology.

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 policy

  • Sociologists should work with governments to uncover objective ‘causes’ of social problems such as crime/ suicide etc.

  • Examples: Durkheim’s study of Suicide

  • Evaluation: Consverative theory which supports the status quo

Social Democratic Perspectives applied to social policies

  • Agree with the above, and generally favour wealth redistribution

  • Peter Townsend’s work on Poverty leading to better welfare provision

  • Evaluation: Welfare breeds dependency

Neoliberal and New Right Perspectives applied to social policies

  • Believe the government should interfere less in social life

  • Believe in policies to encourage competition and are anti-welfare

  • Examples of policies supported: 1988 Education Act, Benefit cuts, Right Realism crime control.

  • Evaluation: all of the above perpetuate inequalities

Marxist perspectives applied to social policy

  • Policies tend to benefit elites by maintaining wealth inequalities and providing ideological control

  • Examples of Policies criticised: Private schools, 1988 education act, selective law enforcement

  • Evaluation: Many social democratic policies seem to benefitted the working classes

Feminist Perspectives applied to social policy

  • Lib Fem – working with governments to legislate for more equal opps

  • Examples of policies supported – equal pay acts, divorce act, maternity and paternity acts.

  • Radical Feminism argues more needs to be done to tackle Pornification and DV Post and Late modernism applied to global social policy – support all of the above, but more needs to be done.

  • Evaluation: enforcing radical feminist ideas means more interference in private lives

Postmodern Perspectives on social policy

  • Postmodernists generally not interested in social policy (but should be pro-diversity)

  • Examples of policies supported: 2010 Equality Act (possibly)

  • Evaluation: Bit of a cop-out!

Late Modern Perspectives on social policy

  • Late Modernists believe social policies need to adapt constantly to globalisation

  • Examples of policies responding to globalisation: New Labour and New Right education policies, numerous crime control policies.

  • Evaluation: Tend to assume policies are neutral responses to globalisation

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 law

Tax breaks for married couples

Maternity and paternity pay

Civil Partnerships

Sure Start – early years child care

Key ‘test yourself’ questions (basic knowledge)

Identify three social policies that might have led to increasing family diversity

Identify three social policies that have ‘extended childhood’ (links to last topic)

Essays

Assess the New Right’s perspective on the relationship between Social Policy and The Family (20)

Assess the view that the main function of laws and policies on families and households is to reproduce patriarchy (20)