Download New Right Family

New Right - Family
Key Words
Dependency Culture/ Benefits/ Single Parent Families/ Underclass/ Welfare State/ Nuclear
Family/ Morality/
Names Key
Charles Murray/ Melanie Phillips
The New Right is a political movement established in the 1980’s. It is
a theory which seeks to directly influence government policies
(laws). The New Right focused its policies around MORALITY and a
return to more traditional norms and values. They believed that the
decline in moral values was leading to a breakdown in social
cohesion (society was falling apart!)
The New Right clashes most with Feminism:
They have very different ideas about the
rise of the single parent family in society. Feminists view the
single parent family as a symbol of female empowerment but the
New Right view single parents as everything that is wrong with
society……….
Think about:
 Why are the women single mothers?
 Who supports the single mother financially?
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New Right - Family
The New Right attack on lone mothers
The New Right argues that (never married) lone mothers who are reliant upon the
government for financial aid bear a strong responsibility for helping to undermine the
values of society. In particular, they argue that children are harmed because there is no
father to provide financial support and to help socialise the child into the normal values of
society.
Furthermore, the reliance upon state aid means that the traditional responsibilities of the
male have been taken away. This had led to a generation of young men in inner cities and
large-scale social housing developments who have no responsibilities and who are
therefore more likely to turn to anti-social behaviour. With no family to support and the
availability of social security payments, they see no need to work. Similarly, the mothers
have no incentive to work as they too receive government support and very often receive
priority for housing.
Some writers have suggested that this has helped form an underclass of people who simply
do not want to work, and who bring up their children to think in the same way.
TASK
Make use of page 71 of Napier Press. Read through the NEW RIGHT
Make notes on why the NEW RIGHT oppose lone parent families…
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New Right - Family
Lone parents: a moral debate
Since the 1990s there has been very considerable debate over the effects of lone-parent
families on society. There are two quite distinct approaches to the lone-parent family

One approach is associated with the academic and political movement of the New
Right. These writers are very critical of the growth of one type of lone-parent family
– where the mother has never married – and argue that it has been directly
responsible for a range of social problems. Never married mothers are seen as a good
example of people who have chosen to make themselves unemployable by their own
actions.

On the other hand, feminist writers have leapt to the defence of lone mothers.
Feminists defend the lone-parent family by pointing out that: The huge majority of
lone mothers (92 per cent) claim not to have become pregnant deliberately and it is
an unforgiving society which punishes them and their children by refusing to give
them state benefits. Also, for many young women, the lone-parent family was more
likely to provide safety and security than the two-parent household, given rates of
violence and abuse by partners
Definition: New Right – A political and
academic approach to understanding society
which stresses that the government (which is
paid for by hard-working tax payers) should
not have to support people who have through
their own decisions either chosen not to work
or made themselves unemployable
Definition: Feminist approach to sociology
– a perspective which argues that much
traditional sociology is the study of society
from a man’s point of view and by looking
at it from a woman’s viewpoint a whole
range of findings of traditional sociology
are brought into question, and a set of new
questions also emerge
Question;
The New Right perspective emphasises the idea that lone-parent families are a burden upon
society. Should the government look after them by taxing other people?
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New Right - Family
TASK
Read the statements in the table below carefully and then write down whether you think it
is from the New Right perspective or the Feminist perspective.
Statements
New Right or Feminist perspective?
Lone parent families scrounge off the
government/state
Women who head lone-parent families are
punished in society
Women and children are safer in lone-parent
family situations
Women can raise children well without a
father figure
Lone-parent families are an ‘evil product of
our time’
Boys can only be socialised by firm and caring
fathers
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