New right have brought in many laws and acts to help protect the nuclear family and to try and persuade people that the nuclear family is best for society. One of these laws is the 1996 Family Law Act, this law made divorce harder to obtain and therefore helped obtain the nuclear family. It also meant a stop of quickie divorces at it would only allow divorce after twelve months of marriage. A campaign of new right is is the 'Back-to-Basics' campaign. This tries to help uphold traditional family values and led to the setting up of the Child Support Agency (CSA). The CSA is a contribution of money to a set of parents to help with the financial cost of raising children. This helps encourage married couples to have children and therefore uphold a nuclear family in society. If new right were in power they would reduce benefits for lone parents and teenage mothers, as then they think it would encourage nuclear families to be formed, and also they would promote the female being the expressive leader so she could stay at home as a traditional nuclear family wive would do, they want this as they think it helps with primary socialization.
Charles Murray, an American sociologist, stated that a number of young healthy and low income males were turning to drugs and crime because they had grown up without a father and so had a lack of main role models within society. This affects them because the female being the expressive leader is dependent on the male, being the instrumental leader, to carry out punishment and so there is a social responsibility breakdown. Murray said that “work must become the center of life” for young men. He said that they should learn to have discipline and respect for work as well as responsibility for being a father, this may not happen due to them not being shown how to be a father when growing up. Murray believes that no alternative family structure could come close to the merits of two parents and therefore agrees with new right thinkers.
Feminists such as Abbott and Wallace see new right ideas as a form of patriarchy, and see the attack on lone parent households as a view that a women's place is in the home. They also show how many conservative policies have harmed rather than helped for example the freezing of child benefit, cuts money in the household and so they parent cannot pay for education and council housing. They argue that the main reason for policies such as this is to cut government spending rather than maintaing a traditional family.
Marxists see new right views as an ideological justification for capitalism. They argue that poverty and equality are not the fault of individuals but a result of the system and the way society is structured.
New Labour are another political party. There do not focus as much on the nuclear family and are not so critical, however they still do believe the nuclear family to be the best. Instead though there emphasis is on education and law and order and also a sense of community and citizenship in a moral company. Within all these category's thought the nuclear family play an important role.
An example of new Labour policies is longer maternity and paternity leave. They also brought in Working Family Tax Credits, which allows tax relief to enable parents to work without losing income due to childcare costs. New Labour also brought in New deal, this helps lone parent s return to paid employment, also to help with childcare they brought in nursery tokens.
Many feminists see New Labour as patriarchal and backward looking in terms of the traditional family. They think that the ideal cereal packet family to be at the forefront of it policy and in this way New Labour policies are accused of reflecting too closely to the New Rights agenda on the family.
