ABSTRACT
In this chapter I shall review various theories of the family that have been developed, especially those by feminists, in the last twenty to thirty years, largely in Britain but also where relevant drawing on research from the United States. I am concerned to consider their appropriateness and adequacy in respect to current political debates about the relationship of families to the education system. Current education reforms are based upon giving power to the family and to parents to decide about their children’s schools. Although there have been extensive debates in feminist circles about the family and motherhood, as there have been by anti-feminist New Right writers, they tend not to bear on these public policy debates and proposed reforms. The education reforms, giving parents power to make educational choices, have been based instead on social scientific non-feminist evidence.
