ABSTRACT
The Parsonian view of the family, both in terms of its internal workings and in its relationship as a dependent variable to the wider society, became the accepted reference point and determined both the conceptual range and style of work on the family for the best part of two decades. Feminist work has made clear that it is impossible to talk of ‘the’ family in the manner of the 1950s sociologists. Feminist work, such as Land's, pointed out that the bourgeois family model of wage-earning husband and dependent wife and children represented an ideal for policy-makers and also for family members including many women. In fact, family policy has become a major issue on the policy agenda of the 1980s, making the understanding achieved by feminist analysis of families and social policies, begun in the early 1970s, of particular significance.
