The Family Policy Evolution Under The Background Of Family Changes In Britain

Since the 1970 s, Britain is in the rapid transition from industrialized society to post-industrial society, along with the rapid rise of the third industry, the adjustment of economic structure and the transformation of the public aspects such as the concept of marriage and family, the British family has been in a profound change accordingly, mainly reflected in the polarization of population structure, the diversification of family patterns and the equality of status of husband and wife. These changes have broken the inherent population structure in Britain and broken through the boundary of British traditional nuclear family, then has brought about many new complex problems to the families, such as long-term slow growth problems of the net population, population aging, work- family imbalances, single-parent families, minors poverty problems and so on, these have led much pressure to the British government.In view of this, based on the principle of supporting traditional family and giving attentions to other family patterns, the British government has formulated and implied a series of family policies from the aspects of the allowance subsidy, tax system, legal measures, institution setting and the social public service policy. They have involved many aspects of family life and family members, such as the thorny issues of marriage and fertility, population growth, the elderly, women, children and so on.To a certain extent, the implementation of these policies have achieved the purposes of expanding employment, increasing household income, reducing poverty, improving woman’s social status and promoting the healthy growth of children. But there are some negative impacts and shortcomings, such as unemployment benefit system encouraged laziness phenomenon, bringing a lot of society “worms”; as a result of the limitation of government funding, The lack of social resources and the imbalance of the audience and so on, the implementation effect of some family policies is not obvious, so it also need a long and hard process and need the British government, social organizations and individuals themselves long-term cooperation and unremitting efforts to solve the family problems finally.