A key assumption is that males are only civilised by marriage and without the pressure to marry (which the Welfare State removes) they turn to drugs and crime., Murray blames this state of affairs on the Welfare State; he argues it rewards worklessness and undermines the nuclear family , Lone parent family (especially the single mother) cannot effectively socialise children, who grow up ‘feral’, According to Murray girls get pregnant without marrying while the boys search for a father-figure and join gangs., Murray identifies a ‘benefits trap’ that means unemployed people end up worse off if they take a job, creating an incentive to stay unemployed , Murray identifies a ‘benefits trap’ leading to generational unemployment., Murray’s solution is to cut back benefits, forcing healthy adults to find work and take responsibility for their families., The idea that trying to help the poor through benefits actually makes their situation worse , Critics claim there is no evidence for the existence of the underclass that Murray describes., Deborah Chambers (2001) argues that lone parent families and their ‘feral’ children is just a moral panic , Dennis & Erdos blame the neoliberal values of Conservative Governments for adding to the problem of broken families, Dennis & Erdos’ view very influential in the New Labour Government that came into power in 1997 , The Welfare State is the political arrangement that collects taxes from the rich and redistributes it in the form of benefit payments to the poor., The New Right argue that the state needs to be shrunk so that businesses and families can manage without interference., Thatcher and Reagan restricted benefits to encourage the unemployed to seek work.,

The New Right: social inequality and social class

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