Family and household

10. Using material from item 2b and elsewhere, assess sociological views of the impact of government policies and laws on family life.

In this question we will be discussing the different sociological views of the impact of government policies and laws on family life.
The government is the mechanism by which they put the policy into place.
As England have a democratic system there is a choice of distinctive political parties we vote in and they represent a range of opinions and they all have different general ideologies for example Conservative, Socialist and Liberal .So they all hold different ideologies on the family meaning they have different ideas on how the family polices should be.

The normal idea for a family has two parents one male, one female and their legal children this is a nuclear family and if the male has most of the power it will become patriarchal nuclear family . Marriage is normally encouraged through tax , couple's tax allowance the tax credits that are given to a married couple but not to single people cohabiting.
Functionalist believe the family is the primary point of socialization in that it provides children with values and norms. Family also stabilizes adult personalities. A family unit provides emotional security for each person in the relationship .Feminists reject the idea of gender socialisation provided in Functionalist theories of the nuclear family and claimed instead that in societies such as the UK the socialised their daughters to show dependence, obedience, conformity and domesticity whereas boys were encouraged to be dominant, competitive and self -reliant and also that when young children saw their parents acting out traditional gender roles they would perceive these roles as natural norm this is known as gender differences.. Governments have tended to have the idea that a woman's place is in the home and have tried to discourage married women from working or at least from working full-time through employment law, State benefits, taxation policy

But there are single parents not just nuclear, in 1993 it became a legal requirement for any individual to show the State to have a partner leaving him or her to raise their child alone to contribute towards the cost of