Welfare policies must move away from a focus on the family to promote women’s autonomy – otherwise they reinforce women’s subordinate role in the family.

In liberal democracies a woman's relationship to the state is mediated by her husband, who is seen to contribute directly to society through his paid work. Despite recognition at the level of discourse of women's "vital unpaid service" to the nation, this service is still treated as if it were but a personal one to her husband. A new model of citizenship needs to explicitly recognize the importance of the "sexual contract." In addition, it must recognize the social changes in personal relationships and intimate/sexual lives. Janet Finch (1989) points out that historical evidence shows that when the state's notion of family obligation is out of line with individual ideas of appropriateness, policies can have the opposite effect to that intended. Both Finch (1989) and Weston (1991) emphasize that individuals tend to see family as a last resort for assistance. This is in direct contrast to the state's assumptions, enshrined in social security policies, that the (nuclear) family should be a first resort. Several authors have proposed concepts that attempt to account for this. Julia O'Connor's insistence on the importance of personal autonomy, as "insulation from personal and public dependence," seems to us a promising direction (O'Connor 1993, 515). Lister's concept of "defamilialization" performs a similar role (1994; see also the discussion in Lister 1995, 29-30). In our opinion, welfare policies need to be disengaged from a particular model of the family— worker-citizen + wife-mother + children—if women are to achieve personal autonomy and a direct relationship to the state. The implications of family change and sexual citizenship for policy are that policies should be based on personal autonomy and enable a variety of supportive relationships. This involves a radical rethinking of the relationship between family and citizenship, a relationship with significant implications for the construction of gender. In an apparently paradoxical fashion, the best way to support families may be to treat people as individuals in social security policies. The privileging of marriage (even if broadened to include cohabiting heterosexual couples and even lesbian or gay couples) is part and parcel of constituting women as "second-class" citizens. Equal citizenship rights involve recognizing the dependence of the "social contract" on the "sexual contract" and devising new ways of organizing the various types of work that need to be done. As Judith Stacey has argued: "The family" is not "here to stay." Nor should we wish it were. On the contrary, I believe that all democratic people, whatever their kinship preferences, should work to hasten its demise. An ideological concept that imposes mythical homogeneity on the diverse means by which people organize their intimate relationships, "the family" distorts and devalues this rich variety of kinship stories.