ABSTRACT
This chapter will argue that social policies in Britain are constructed around anxiety about family fragility and change. It will be concerned with debates on delinquency and child abuse which have viewed these social problems as transmitted or influenced by pathologies in family life, and by deviant family forms – especially female headed families, and especially those dependent on state welfare. The chapter will look at the historical roots of current neo-traditionalist family policies. It will look at the public debates on family life, at the politicians, professions and voluntary organizations who have been powerful in shaping perceptions of social problems, and at how gender images of ‘good mothers’ as responsible and vigilant have been created. The boundary between the family and the state is one that is always fluid, but I shall argue that since the early 1970s there has been a strong attempt to push care back on to women in families. Family services such as pre-school playgroups and Home-Start will be discussed as examples of the shifting of responsibility for childcare back from the state on to women. Women's own needs for assistance with caring tasks as well as for protection and assistance if they are abused have been marginalized in the discourses on child abuse and the fragility of the family.
