ABSTRACT
The equation of scientific policy with an informed consensus produced an impulse towards the accommodation of practical differences; it is also possible to detect in the consensus, which limited and contained debate on specific proposals, an implication that modernisation involved some loosening of traditional social controls. The continuing social control function of social policy is most obvious in the coercive power of the law. In the 1890s some attempts had been made to discover the extent to which parents in their old age were supported by their sons and daughters, but even after the introduction of pensions in 1908 very little was known about the personal circumstances of old people. It might be possible to trace an incomplete and uneasy transition between the 1890s and 1929 from the notion of family ties as weak and in need of reinforcement, to an acceptance of their value and strength; but this would be a very fleeting and uncertain theme to take.
