Cross Cultural

Differences In Family

Social Policy:It is important to realise that social policy is context bound and influenced

depending upon the needs/ wants of any particular culture or government.

Rapid population growth in China has means that the

government discourage couples from having multiple

children.

China’s One-Child

Policy:

Couples who comply get extra benefits such as free child

healthcare & priority education for their child. Those who

don’t comply must pay back their allowances & pay fines.

This encourages women to opt for sterilisation treatment

and/ or give up additional children to foster care.

This is supervised by ‘Workplace Family Planning

Committees’ – women must seek permission to become

pregnant (obtaining a license). Workplaces have quotas

& waiting lists.

Russia’s ‘Family-Abolishment’

Policy:

Many women entered paid employment and the state

provided many communal nurseries to encourage this

trend.

This all changed due to years of War & famine. The Soviet Union ‘U-

Turned’ and began to encourage traditional family structures in order to

create a solid industrial economy.Divorce laws were tightened & families that had

more children were rewarded with higher family

allowance benefits. Highly fertile women were

celebrated as ‘Hero Mothers of the Soviet Union’.Romania’s ’Multiple Child’

Policy: In an attempt to drive up the declining population in the

1980s, Romania experienced a restriction on contraception

and abortion as well more stringent divorce laws.

The legal age of marriage was reduced to 15 years-old

& unmarried, childless couples had to pay an extra 5%

income tax.

In light of the Russian Revolution 1917, the newly formed

Soviet Union attempted to eradicate traditional,

patriarchal family structures & as such made divorce &

abortion easier to obtain.

Nazi Germany’s ‘Pure Family’

Policy:During the 1930s, the Nazi state opted for a two-fold

family policy:

1) ‘Racially Pure’ Families were encouraged to breed a

‘Master Race’.

2) A mass cull of the ‘Racially

Impure’.Women were removed from the workforce and confined to ‘Children,

Kitchen & Church as to better perform their biological mother role.

375.000 disabled people were sterilised on the grounds that they were

‘unfit’ to breed due to; Physical Malformation, Mental Retardation,

Epilepsy, Imbecility, Deafness or Blindness’.