Family Social Policy What Are the Different

Family Social Policy

What are the different ideological approaches to family social policy…how are they different?

Canada has traditionally taken the position that the responsibility for keeping a family intact is a private issue, not a public / governmental issue, according to Module 9. In terms of the ideological approach to families, the Module 9 explains four strategies.

Familialism is the approach taken in Canada for heterosexual family values; this approach supports women staying home to raise children and men getting jobs outside the home. Any struggles the family may have (money, marriage difficulties) are to be kept within the family.

Liberal Feminism differs from Familialism in that men and women have an equal basis for respect, both in the workplace and at home, but especially in the workplace. This ideology does not suggest that women should be raising children, staying home, and being homemakers. That typical role for a woman is minimized based on a concept of equal opportunity for both members of the partnership or marriage. Moreover, Caucasian feminists believe that the "nuclear family" (tradition family, as in Familialism) creates oppression for women.

Maternalism is an ideology that places great value on "motherhood" and on "all the attendant traditional values of homemaking and child rearing" (Module 9). In fact the Canadian government puts "special policies in place" so the woman receives allowances, pensions and maternity leave, which is quite different from Familialism, where she stays home and raises the children but is not the recipient of special allowances.

Pronatalism is the ideology that is designed to promote the birth rate in Canada. This strategy encourages women in heterosexual families to produce children, even provides some family allowances called the "baby bonus" for families that give birth to more babies to help populate the vast geography of Canada. Clearly this is a policy that is quite different than the other three previously mentioned.

Two examples of racialized family policy include: a) the domestic work done in Canada by members of First Peoples groups (women of color); it has become a racially-linked position in Canada to expect that the housekeeping work by minorities and women of color; b) the fact that Caribbean Canadians (according to Module 9) are denied the right to "leave their domestic work to start families and live in their own families" is clearly a racialized family policy.

What is wrong with Canada's family policy? One issue that is brought up by Susan McDaniel is that Canada has a "long-standing tendency to account for social problems in the manner least costly to the society" (McDaniel, 286). In other words, the problem is the family, not historical changes in Canada, or government policies, McDaniel believes, and so with that approach, Canada can pass the responsibility on to the family. Also, Canada's policies toward families are often based on "biases, myths, and misconceptions" about what a family really is or what it should be. A great deal of family research is conducted by men, which McDaniel asserts "…results in an incomplete picture of family"; and moreover, the research men conduct is on "traditional" families which implies that "non-traditional families are deficient, deviant, abnormal, or in the process of becoming traditional" (288-89).