Constituting Sexuality through Social Policy: The Case of Lone Motherhood 1834 and Today
| Author | Jean Carabine |
| DOI | 10.1177/a018597 |
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
CONSTITUTING SEXUALITY
THROUGH SOCIAL POLICY: THE
CASE OF LONE MOTHERHOOD
1834 AND TODAY
JEAN CARABINE
The Open University, UK
ABSTRACT
Adopting a poststructural approach this article explores the intersection of sexuality
and social policy, particularly the role of policies in constituting sexual norms and
through these, deserving and undeserving gendered welfare subjects. It examines
unmarried and lone motherhood discourses of two periods – the 1830s and the 1990s
– and shows that not only do particular representations of lone motherhood persist
across the centuries but also that welfare policies perform a normalizing and regu-
latory role in relation to sexuality. It illustrates also how policy makers dismiss the
moral, economic and sexual rationalities of welfare subjects, preferring instead to
impose their own set of moral values. In exploring the sexuality–social policy dynamic
it demonstrates that not only is social policy ‘shot through’ with sexuality but also
that the two are mutually constitutive. Further, the article demonstrates the shifting
dynamics of the normalization process whereby that which was once abhorred is
embraced, as well as the ways that sexuality is regulated through social policy without
resorting to the power of law or legal method.
INTRODUCTION
THE CONCERNof this article is with exploring the interrelationship
of sexuality and social policy, particularly the role of social and welfare
policies in constituting sexual norms, and through these, deserving and
undeserving welfare subjects. It takes as its focus an examination of dis-
courses about unmarried/lone motherhood during two periods – the 1830s
and the 1990s – and shows that welfare policies can be understood as per-
forming a regulatory role in relation to sexuality. The 1830s example illus-
trates the dynamics of the sexuality–social policy relationship in the creation
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of a social problem, the categorization of unmarried mothers, their subse-
quent vilification and stigmatization, and the generation of resistances.
Additionally, we can also begin to sense resonances and echoes between
recent representations of single pregnant women and unmarried mothers and
the representations of those women in the 1830s, for example, as in the rep-
resentation of women deliberately getting pregnant in order to obtain bene-
fits. In both examples social policy is used to override unmarried/lone
mothers’ moralities by asserting an alternative moral matrix. The article is
informed by a Foucauldian perspective and utilizes his concepts of power,
normalization and sexuality. The article is divided into three parts; the first
proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting the sexuality/social inter-
face. The second is an analysis of discourses of illegitimacy, unmarried
motherhood and the relief of poverty in Britain in the 1830s which draws
upon the 1834 Poor Law Commissioners’ Reports and New Poor Law
Amendment Act. The final section considers the contemporary relevance of
these 19th-century discourses.
CENTRING SEXUALITY IN SOCIAL POLICY AND WELFARE
ANALYSES
This research originally developed out of a concern to understand and explain
the relationship between sexuality and social policy, as discourse, practice and
discipline. Regardless of recent attempts to incorporate a theorizing of
heterosexuality in social, political and legal theory (Collier, 1999; Richard-
son, 1996), the relationship between sexuality and social policy has been
largely ignored. As a result, little work has been undertaken that critiques
heterosexuality as ‘taken for granted’ in welfare practice or as central to social
policy analyses. Because of this, mainstream social policy has tended to
ignore the relevance of sexuality in theorizing and analysing social welfare
policy and practice. This ‘blindness’ to or marginalizing of sexuality within
the discipline has been due to a combination of factors: the influence of domi-
nant discourses of (hetero)sexuality (resulting in a ‘taken for granted’
assumption of the universality of heterosexuality informing social policy
analyses); a privatizing of sexuality and sexual relations; the historical
development of the discipline, particularly the influence of Fabianism and the
social administration legacy; and finally, an implicit consensus about what
constituted the ‘real’ concerns of social policy and welfare (see Carabine,
1996a, for detailed discussion). Surprisingly the marginalization of sexuality
is not confined solely to what are referred to as mainstream social policy
analyses but also to many feminist critiques. This lack of theorizing of sexu-
ality is particularly remarkable as much of feminist politics has been very sub-
stantially concerned with sexuality issues and analyses of sexuality have been
central to a great deal of feminist writing outside of the discipline of social
policy (Carabine, 1996a). What follows therefore is part of a project to centre
sexuality in social policy and welfare analyses.
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CARABINE: SEXUALITY THROUGH SOCIAL POLICY
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More recently, some social policy commentators have begun to argue that
a poststructural theoretically informed analysis can provide new insights to
understanding social policy and welfare (see for example, Hewitt, 1992;
Lewis, 2000a; O’Brien and Penna, 1998; Parton, 1996; Watson, 2000). In
particular, poststructural perspectives can be used to ‘challenge the rationality
of traditional policy discourses and practices and contest their logics, con-
ventions and norms’ (O’Brien and Penna 1998: 202). One particularly fruit-
ful approach for understanding the sexuality–social policy dynamic is a
Foucauldian informed analysis, especially his work on sexuality, know-
ledge/power, disciplinary and biopower, the body, discourse and normaliza-
tion (Foucault, 1990, 1991). Drawing upon and developing the work of
Foucault I have suggested that the social policy/sexuality relationship can be
characterized in terms of four different interrelated aspects: Normalization,
Constitutive, Invisibility and Contestation (Carabine, 1996b).
Normalization refers to the role of social policy in defining and reaffirm-
ing (hetero)sexuality as it is constituted at any specific moment as acceptable
and appropriate sexuality. Readers will be familiar with Foucault’s concept of
‘normalization’ whereby individuals are compared and differentiated and
deemed to conform or not according to a desired norm (Foucault, 1991).
While we may be measured and positioned in relation to such norms, as in
the case of heterosexuality, we are also in a continual process of reflexivity in
relation to them, forever assessing, establishing and negotiating our position
vis-à-vis such norms (Giddens, 1991: 76–8, 99–108). Therefore, we need to
envisage a continual, if uneven and contradictory, process whereby we as
individuals are in constant process of reassessing, establishing and negotiat-
ing our position in relation to the norm.
Normalization operates variously in social policy. Under the UK
Beveridgean postwar welfare state (BWS), for example, normalization estab-
lished ideal gendered and sexual roles for men and women. Embedded at the
heart of the BWS was the heterosexual married couple comprised of the
father/breadwinner male and housewife/mother/carer female. Women’s
labour market inactivity and dependency on men was assumed and they were
expected to earn their ‘right’ to welfare through their husband’s contri-
butions. Natural, normal and acceptable sexuality was typified by this model
of heterosexuality and social policy and welfare provision reflected this.
Accordingly, single mothers, homosexuality, cohabitation and divorce were
variously castigated and abhorred as immoral, abnormal and unacceptable,
resulting in partial or marginal inclusion and conditional eligibility for
welfare benefits and services.
In terms of Foucault’s proposition that discourses are ‘practices which
form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972: 49), this operates in
the social policy–sexuality relationship in different but related ways. At one
level, welfare and social policy – through the discourses and discursive prac-
tices they promulgate – can be said to play a constitutive role in producing
welfare subjects, as in single mothers, the poor, the deserving, the unem-
ployed, the homeless, welfare scroungers, and so on (Leonard, 1997;
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Watson, 2000). Discourses, and welfare discourses are part of this, simul-
taneously construct ‘the places in the discursive schema from which sub-
jects engage in a hierarchically coded and normatively valorized world’
(Lewis, 2000b). Associated with this feature of the constitutive process is
that which we know as the ‘truths’ or knowledges of sexuality at any given
moment also constitute social policy in a specific way. This reflects the exist-
ing power–knowledge relations centred on sexuality. By this I mean that
dominant ideas about what sexuality is at any given time, along with ideas
about what is acceptable and appropriate, legal and illegal sexuality, all con-
tribute, albeit sometimes unevenly, to how social policy is itself constituted
and to the analytical frameworks employed to...
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