The Quest for ‘Family Policy’

Abstract

The previous two chapters, considered, respectively, areas of interaction between family and state in actual British policy, and generalised models for the family-state relationship. This chapter will conclude the discussion of family and state by addressing briefly some aspects of the idea of ‘family policy’. This phrase, which appears at intervals in the literature on family and state, and on social policy generally, has no clear-cut meaning, and is not perhaps susceptible to any definitive analysis. What this chapter attempts to do is only to raise some specific questions and issues relating to the concept of ‘family policy’.