The UK vs. China: Laws and Social Policies Affecting Family Life
Examine the ways in which laws and social policies affect family life
Firstly in the UK, family is not controlled by regulations or law, compared with different societies such as China. Many Laws or social policies tend to encourage or discourage different types of families; however they do not actively enforce laws or regulations onto them like China’s one child policy. The Government or other agencies only take an active role on policing areas of family life when things are perceived to have gone wrong, such as regulating the fair distribution of salary towards children following the breakdown of a marriage.
Most social policies which are currently found in the UK come from a New Labour perspective. The new Labour perspective party has been in power for over a decade therefore, many of these current social policies encourage the existence of the family, For example, labour modified the law so that unmarried couples or both heterosexual and homosexual had the same right to adopt to that of a married couple. This has made adopting easier for unmarried couples if their partner has fertility issues, but the biggest change to have resulted from it is that homosexual couples can now, fairly easily, adopt children, therefore increasing family diversity.
The changes made to the society have been criticised by New Right thinkers. The new right thinkers claim that these undermine the nuclear, by removing the restriction on unmarried couples from adopting children. They also claim that, due to children not being raised in the “natural” environment of the nuclear family, that the children who are brought up in this manner will be more likely to take part in anti-social behaviour and more likely to commit crimes or get pregnant in teenage years.
Furthermore despite all of this, most feminists are in favour of cohabiting couples being afforded similar rights to a married couple. Liberal feminists see this as a step towards equality, as this is moving away from a
Firstly in the UK, family is not controlled by regulations or law, compared with different societies such as China. Many Laws or social policies tend to encourage or discourage different types of families; however they do not actively enforce laws or regulations onto them like China’s one child policy. The Government or other agencies only take an active role on policing areas of family life when things are perceived to have gone wrong, such as regulating the fair distribution of salary towards children following the breakdown of a marriage.
Most social policies which are currently found in the UK come from a New Labour perspective. The new Labour perspective party has been in power for over a decade therefore, many of these current social policies encourage the existence of the family, For example, labour modified the law so that unmarried couples or both heterosexual and homosexual had the same right to adopt to that of a married couple. This has made adopting easier for unmarried couples if their partner has fertility issues, but the biggest change to have resulted from it is that homosexual couples can now, fairly easily, adopt children, therefore increasing family diversity.
The changes made to the society have been criticised by New Right thinkers. The new right thinkers claim that these undermine the nuclear, by removing the restriction on unmarried couples from adopting children. They also claim that, due to children not being raised in the “natural” environment of the nuclear family, that the children who are brought up in this manner will be more likely to take part in anti-social behaviour and more likely to commit crimes or get pregnant in teenage years.
Furthermore despite all of this, most feminists are in favour of cohabiting couples being afforded similar rights to a married couple. Liberal feminists see this as a step towards equality, as this is moving away from a