Examine the Way in Which Laws and Social Policies Affect the Family

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Examine the way in which laws and social policies affect the family. A family is a group consisting of one or more parents and their child/children who liv e together as a family unit. Structures include the nuclear family, extended family, reconstituted family, lone-parent and same-sex families. The actions and polices of the government can sometimes have a profound effect on families and their members: e.g. cross-cultural examples from different society’s and historical periods can show us some of the more extreme ways in which the state policies can affect family life. This can help us to see the relationship between families and social policies in a new light. Social policies refers to the plans and actions of the government agencies, this usually based on laws that provide the framework within which these agencies operate. Sociologists agree that social policy can have an important influence on family life, they all hold different views about what kind of effects it has and whether these are desirable. Functionalists see society as built on harmony and consensus, and free from major conflicts. They see the state as acting in the interests of society as a whole and its social policies as being for the good for all and helping families perform their functions more effectively and make life better for their members. Ronald Fletcher argues that the introduction of health, education and housing policies in the years since the industrial revolution has gradually led to the development of a welfare state that supports the family in performing its functions more effectively e.g. the introduction of national health service allows the family today to take better care of their members when they are sick. The functionalist view has been criticised on two man counts: It assumes that all members of the family benefit from social policies, where feminists argues that the
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