| Abstract: | This paper examines the history of the debate between advocates of the regulation and the deregulation of family life through a case study of English social policy for children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It introduces the generational order as an issue worthy of consideration alongside that of the gender order. It considers the nature of the relationship between private and public spheres of social action and questions the adequacy of rigid formulations of this distinction. Successive attempts to develop technologies of intervention are discussed and the limitations imposed by liberal political theory are identified. It is argued, nevertheless, that the generational order is of such importance that some form of social regulation is inescapable. |
