Social Policy and The Family

How do social policies affect family life?

This post defines social policy and then examines the 1969 Divorce Act, Maternity and Paternity Acts, the Civil Partnership Act and Child Benefit policies, looking at how these policies have impacted different aspects of family life such as marriage, divorce, family structure, as well as the differential impact on men, women and children within the family.

What is social policy?

Social policy refers to the plans and actions of state agencies such as health and social services, the welfare benefits system and schools and other bodies.

Policies are usually based on laws introduced by governments that provide the framework within which these agencies will operate. For example, laws lay down who is entitled to each specific welfare benefit.

Most social policies affect families in some way or other. Some are aimed directly at families, such as laws governing marriage and divorce, abortion or contraception, child protection, adoption and so on.

Policies are not necessarily aimed specifically at families but will have an effect in families. Such policies would include those on childcare, education, housing, and crime. Furthermore, many policies that impact upon families are those that make changes to the legislation on taxation and benefits, such as child tax credits.

Recently, the Department for Education and Skills has been given a new name and expanded role. The creation of the Department for Children, Schools and Families suggest that the current government believe that to make a better society for the children of today, family life and education should not be treated as two separate areas of life.

There are many social policies which have affected family life over the years, so the summary below is necessarily selective!

Social Policy and the Family: A Summary

a grid summarising how social policy impacts family life 1969 to 2004
A grid summarysing how social policy impacts family life 2013 to 2024.

Marriage and Divorce Policies

The most well-known act is probably the 1969 Divorce Act which made getting a divorce MUCH easier. Since then, the main policies have been focused on equalising marriage for same-sex couples and most recently raising the legal age of marriage from 16 to 18.

The 1969 Divorce Act

Before 1969, one partner had to prove that the other was ‘at fault’ to be granted a divorce, however, following the Divorce Reform Act of 1969, a marriage could be ended if it had irretrievably broken down, and neither partner no longer had to prove “fault”. However, if only one partner wanted a divorce, they still had to wait 5 years from the date of marriage to get one. In 1984 this was changed so that a divorce could be granted within one year of marriage.

The Civil partnerships Act 2004

The Civil Partnership Act 2004 gave same-sex couples the rights and responsibilities like those in a civil marriage. The Act was introduced by the New Labour government in power at the time. Civil partners are entitled to the same property rights, the same exemptions on inheritance tax, social security, and pension benefits as married couples. They also have the same ability to get parental responsibility for a partner’s children as well as reasonable maintenance, tenancy rights, insurance, and next-of-kin rights in hospital and with doctors. There is a process like divorce for dissolving a civil partnership. 

There were 60 938 Same-Sex Civil Partnerships formed between 2004 and 2013, with annual numbers being around 6500 a year following an initial spike in the first couple years. From 2013 annual numbers of same-sex civil partnerships dropped to fewer than 1000 a year reflecting the fact that from 2013 same-sex couples were allowed to get married on the same basis as opposite-sex couples. 

Since 2019 opposite-sex couples can also enter civil-partnerships and in 2021 6000 couples did so, but these numbers may be lower because of Covid-19 restrictions on social gatherings.  

The Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013 

This act allows same-sex couples to enter a marriage in England and Wales on the same basis as opposite-sex couples, and to convert Civil Partnerships to Marriages. Statistics from the ONS suggest that same-sex couples prefer marriage over civil partnerships as there were approximately 6000 same-sex marriages in 2019, which reflects the drop off in the number of civil partnerships since marriage has been an option. 

The Marriage and Civil Partnership Minimum Age Act 2022

In 2022 the minimum age of marriage in England and Wales was raised to 18. Previously it had been possible for 16 and 17 year olds to get married with parental consent. Since 2022 it is illegal to force children, including 16 and 17 year olds to marry and to do so could incur a jail sentence of up to seven years in prison. The act also covers more ‘informal’ non-legally binding ceremonies.  

Maternity and Paternity Policies

In 2023 new mothers in the UK are entitled to 52 weeks statutory maternity leave, 39 weeks of which is paid, but at different rates. 

  • The first 6 weeks of maternity leave are paid at 90% of your salary. 
  • The next 33 weeks you are paid £172.48 per week or 90% of weekly average earnings (whichever is lower) 
  • Any remaining leave is unpaid up to a maximum of 52 weeks. 

Fathers are only entitled to up to two weeks of paternity leave, paid at the same rate as the final 33 weeks of maternity leave pay for mothers (£172.48 per week or 90% of weekly average earnings, whichever is lower. 

Since 2015 parents can apply for up to 50 weeks of Shared Parental Leave, up to 37 weeks of which are paid. For this to work the woman must swap her maternity leave for shared leave, this isn’t extra leave for the father. 

There is quite a long history of changes to maternity and paternity policy…. 

The Employment Protection Act of 1975

Social responsibility for women’s health during childbearing was first recognised through the 1911 National Insurance Act. It included a universal maternal health benefit and a one off maternity grant of 30 shillings for insured women (around £119 in today’s money)

However, many women were routinely sacked for becoming pregnant until the late 1970s and the UK only introduced its first maternity leave legislation through the Employment Protection Act 1975. However, for the first 18 years (until 1993!) only about half of working women were eligible for it because of long qualifying periods of employment. The act was amended in 1993 so that all pregnant women got a minimum of 14 weeks statutory maternity leave regardless of prior employment 

Paternity polices

In 2003, male employees received paid statutory paternity leave for the first time, an entitlement that was extended in January 2010.

Since 2010 (following what is often called the ‘Paternity Act’) – This leave is divided into two 26-week periods. After the first 26 weeks, the father of the child (or the mother’s partner) has the right to take up to 26 weeks’ leave if their partner returns to work, in effect taking the place of the mother at home. It is unlawful to dismiss (or single out for redundancy) a pregnant employee for reasons connected with her pregnancy.

Shared Parental Leave

From 2015, parents will be given the right to share the care of their child in the first year after birth. Women in employment will retain their right to 52 weeks of maternity leave. Only mothers will be allowed to take leave in the first two weeks’ leave after birth. But after that parents can divide up the rest of the maternity leave.

Child Benefit Policies

Child benefit is payable for every child parents have, although if you’re a parent who earns more than £60 000 in 2023 you have to pay back all of it in the form of extra taxes.

Child Benefit has been around for almost 50 years!

The Child Benefit Acts (1975) 

The Child Benefit Bill introduced for the first time a universal payment, paid for each child. The rate payable was £1/week for the first and £1.50 for each subsequent child. An additional 50p was payable to lone-parent families.

Child Benefits increased in line with inflation, until 1998, when the new Labour government increased the first child rate by more than 20% and abolished the Lone Parent rate. Rates increased again in line with inflation until 2010, since which time they have been frozen.

Effective from 7 January 2013, Child Benefit became means tested – those earning more than £50,000 per year would have part of their benefit withdrawn, and if earning over £60,000, would receive nothing at all.

Child Benefit in 2023

In 2023 everyone with children receives child benefit payments in the following amounts:

  • £24 a week for the first child
  • £15.90 a week for each subsequent child. 
  • There is no limit to the number of children parents will receive child benefit for.  

These payments are awarded for children up to the age 16 and up to age of 20 if they stay on in further or higher education. 

They are payable to everyone whether working or in receipt of Universal Credit and the payments are in addition to the child payment part of universal credit. 

However, for those earning £50 000 or more a year, they pay additional taxes: a ‘child tax credit charge’ which recoups some of the money received in child benefit, and for those earning £60K a year, they pay so much this cancels out the entire amount they will receive in child benefit. 

Universal Credit Child Benefits

Universal Credit was introduced in 2013 to replace a wide range of other individual benefits including income support, housing benefit, working tax credit and child tax credit. 

The total amount of universal credit for single people is just under £15 000 a year and for a single person or couple with children the cap is £22 000 a year (if they have two children living with them). 

The general idea behind universal credit is to encourage people into work by making sure they are not earning less when working in part-time or low-paid jobs compared to claiming benefits. Prior to Universal Credit the benefits system had perverse incentives meaning you could earn less working 16 hours a week than on benefits because when you started working more than 16 hours per week JobSeeker’s Allowance would stop and you would lose your housing benefit. Under Universal Credit this doesn’t happen because if your earnings are below £15000 (if you’re a single person), they are ‘topped up’, thus encouraging more people into work (3)

In 2023, people with children who are eligible for Universal Credit receive £315 for their first child and then £270 for their second child, payable until those children turn 18 (assuming they stay in education) and then no further payments for any further children they have after the first two (unless they already had three or more children before 2017 and were already claiming the previous child tax credit and transferred onto Universal Credit). 

The money paid by the government for children (the ‘child tax credit’ part of universal credit, if you like) is part of that overall cap. If someone’s overall Universal Credit amount is greater than £22 000 when they start receiving more money because of having two children, universal credit would automatically adjust downwards to the upper cap.

The Adoption Act 2005

In 2005, under New Labour, the law on adoption changed, giving unmarried couples, including gay couples, the right to adopt on the same basis as married couples.

Signposting and Related Posts 

This topic is part of the families and households module, normally taught in the first year of A-level sociology.

After reading this post you should read this one: Sociological Perspectives on Social Policy and The Family 

You might also like this brief video on… How do Social Policies Affect Family Life?

Sources

ONS (December 2022) Civil Partnerships in England and Wales 2021 

ONS (May 2022) Marriages in England and Wales 2019 

(3) This is a simplified version, things are a little more complex, to see more: Gov.UK (Accessed May 2023) Universal Credit Allowances

Gov.UK (Accessed May 2023) Universal Tax Credit and Children

A Radical Feminist Perspective on the Family

the norm of the traditional, privatised nuclear family can disadvantage women who would be more free in women only households.

Radical feminists see society as patriarchal: all social institutions are systematically structured to run in the interests of men and to maintain male power over women.

The traditional nuclear family is seen as one of the most important institutions which subordinates women to male power by putting women into the roles of housewives and mothers, through which they become financially dependent on men.

Physical violence against women is one of the main ways male domination over women is maintained and the ideology of the the privatised nuclear family makes it easier for men to commit domestic violence. If the family is private in makes it easier for domestic violence to continue on, hidden away from public view.

Precisely because the family is supposed to be private, victims of domestic violence are reluctant to report crimes against them and friends, neighbours and state agencies reluctant to investigate.

For radical feminists men and women have different interests and part of the radical feminist strategy is consciousness raising to help women realise this. Part of this involves challenging women’s ideas that the nuclear family set up is good, and getting them to question whether they need to have children or families at all.

Some radical feminists have suggested that in order to combat patriarchy women need to live in radically alternative family structures: such as women only households or even adopting lesbian relationships.

Germaine Greer – The Whole Woman and The Family

Germaine Greer (2000) argues that the family continues to disadvantage women. She focuses on looking at the role of women as wives, mothers and daughters.

Women as Wives

Greer argues that there is a strong ideology suggesting that being a wife is the most important female role. The wives of presidents and prime ministers get considerable publicity, but often have to be subservient to their husbands. Such a role demands that the woman…

‘Must not only be seen to be at her husband’s side on all formal occasions, she must also be seen to adore him and never to appear less than dazzled by everything he may say or do. Her eyes should be fixed on him but he should do his best never to be caught looking at her’.

Radical feminist criticism of marriage

This inequality is mirrored in most marriages. Greer argues that marriage reinforces patriarchal relations from the outset. What she refers to as the ‘ghastly figure of the bride’ expresses traditional conceptions of femininity and once the honeymoon period is over marriage settles into a pattern in which husbands spend more time outside of the home compared to the wife (reinforcing the gendered public-private divide), spends more money on himself, does less housework and generally does better out of the relationship. Wives tend to see it as their job to keep the husband happy, while the husband thinks he has done all he needs to keep his wife happy just by consenting to marry her.

It is typically women who are more likely to think they need to be married in order to be happy, but in reality this is a myth. In fact it is men who do better out of marriage than women. Married men report higher levels of satisfaction than non-married men, while single women report higher levels of satisfaction than married women.

Three quarters of divorces are initiated by women, which has led to a decline in the stable married-family in recent years. Greer sees this as a good thing because the illusion of traditional family life was built on the silence of suffering women.

Women as mothers

Greer consents that motherhood can be intrinsically satisfying she argues that it is not valued by society. She says ‘mothers bear children in pain, feed them from their bodies, cherish and nourish and prepare to lose them’. Children are expected to leave their mother’s home when quite young and to ow their mothers little or nothing in return. Many of the elderly who die of hypothermia are mothers, yet their children accept no responsibility for helping to support them. Society attaches no or little value to motherhood:

‘Mother’ is not a career option; the woman who gave her all to mothering has to get in shape, find a job, and jeep young and beautiful if she wants to be loved. ‘Motherly is a word for people who are frumpish and suffocating’.

Greer suggests at least the following pieces of evidence to demonstrate that mothers are undervalued in society:

  1. In childbirth, the attention focuses mostly on the well-being of the child. The mother’s health takes a back-seat.
  2. Mothers and babies are generally not welcomed in society – in restaurants and public transport for example.
  3. Women are expected to return to work shortly after giving birth, on top of all of the child care duties.
  4. The feminine ideal is to be slim and hipless, while broad hips and the blossom of maternity are seen as monstrous. Women are expected to ‘regain their figure’ shortly after childbirth.
  5. After all is said and done the final role for mothers is to take the blame if their children go bad. Single mothers are here singled out for special attention.

Women as daughters

According to Greer men expect to exercise control over women and expect them to service their needs. Greer argues that daughters are quite likely to experience sexual abuse from their fathers, step-fathers and other male relatives and that this is a particularly horrendous form of patriarchy and is an extension of male heterosexuality.

She believes that such abuse is very much more common than most of us think and that ‘it is understood that heterosexual men fancy young things, that youth itself is a turn-on, but no-one is sure how young is too young. Why after all are sexy young women called ‘babes’?

Solutions to patriarchal families

While Greer does not believe that women should cut themselves off from men altogether she thinks they would be better off in matrilocal households, where all the adults are female. She believes such households have a lot to offer women, especially if they incorporate the many older women currently living alone.

Evaluations of radical feminism

A problem with Greer’s work is that it makes sweeping generalisations which are not backed up by evidence. In fairness it took me a while to find the above picture of the Camerons, most of them seem to involve them looking at each other, rather than her looking at him.

Jennifer Somerville in particular is very critical of Greer, arguing that she does not take into account the progress women have made in terms of family life in recent years.

This 2019 comparative study of the subjective well being of men and women in cohabiting and married relationships found that married women and men are no happier than those cohabiting, so at the very least we can say marriage doesn’t make you happier, and thus maybe isn’t necessary!

Evidence supporting radical feminism

Women still do more housework and childcare than men

In 2022 women did 30 minutes more housework per day than men and an hour per day more childcare.

According to a 2021 YouGov survey  38% of women in full time work say they are primarily responsible for childcare and housework compared to only 9% of men. 

Around 40% of men and women say they share domestic chores and housework equally. 

Things haven’t changed since 2017. 

Same sex couples share domestic chores more equally

One (2020) study: Same Sex Couples Division of Labour from a Cross National Perspective  found that both male and female same-sex couples divide their domestic chores more equally than opposite sex couples, and female couples share more equally than male couples. 

It also found that where paid work is concerned male couples do more paid work than females: suggesting broad support for gender role socialisation norms carrying on into adulthood independently of the heterosexual family. 

The shocking maternity laws in the U.S.A

25% of women in the U.S. have to return to work two weeks after childbirth (1) because their employers only give them the minimum of two weeks statutory maternity pay. 

This affects women in low-paid jobs more, professional women are far more likely to get more generous maternity packages. 

The problem is with social policy in America: the law only requires companies provide a minimum of two weeks paid leave, it’s a good example of social policy not working for women. 

(1) (2020) Why one in four women in the U.S. return to work two weeks after childbirth 

Related Posts

This material is mainly relevant to the families and households topic within A-level sociology.

Feminist perspectives on the family (which covers all three types of Feminism)

The Liberal Feminist Perspective on the Family

The Marxist Feminist perspective on the family