Family Policy

Abstract

An important, if not the dominant, tendency in relation to contemporary family policy is that the welfare of children, rather than that of adults, provides the central rationale. In this chapter, we explore the main contours of the policies and activities which have emerged in this field and which stem from this rationale. We locate this analysis within a brief overview of dominant approaches to family policy in the twentieth century and chart the continuities and discontinuities under New Labour.

The main part of our family policy is about ensuring that children are better supported, everything springs from that (Home Office spokesperson quoted in The Guardian, 27 March 2000).