SOCIALIZATION

• When thinking about the kind of parent one might be, values like responsibility, hard work, helping others, creativity, religious faith, and kindness are often considered important to instill in children.
• In a 2014 Pew Research Center study, responsibility, hard work, and helping others were ranked as the most important qualities to instill in children, with creativity and religious faith ranked lower.
• People generally believe children should be kind, responsible, and productive members of society.
• Socialization is the lifelong process of learning norms, values, behaviors, and social skills appropriate to one’s social position, such as age, gender, or social class.
• Examples of socialization include how parents, teachers, and others instill values like responsibility and manners through role modeling, lecturing, and praise.
• Socialization lessons must be appropriate to a child’s maturity level. For example, parents of teenagers emphasize independence and good manners, while parents of younger children value creativity.
• The values parents deem essential for their children have changed over time. In the 1920s, parents valued obedience, while by the late 20th century, autonomy and independence were emphasized.
• Shifts in values reflect changes in the roles and opportunities for children, such as the transition from factory work requiring obedience to white-collar jobs requiring independent thinking and creativity.
• Socialization is the process through which an infant becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable person, learning the ways of their culture, such as becoming a student, a worker, or a parent.
• Socialization involves intense learning of social roles and is key to social reproduction, ensuring structural continuity across generations.
• Children learn the ways of their elders, perpetuating values, norms, and social practices of society, ensuring continuity.
• Societies have characteristics that endure over time, such as the dominance of the English language in North America.
• Socialization connects generations, with parents and grandparents learning new roles and relationships as they raise children.
• Learning and adjustment continue throughout the life course, with cultural learning being most intense during infancy and early childhood.
• The text discusses the interaction of nature and nurture, exploring key agents of socialization such as families, schools, peers, and the media.
• It also explores human development, including stages of gender identity development and race socialization, where parents teach children the meaning of racial identity.

AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION

• Socialization occurs in two broad phases: primary socialization and secondary socialization.
• Primary socialization, occurring in infancy and childhood, is the most intense period of cultural learning, where children learn language and basic behavioral patterns.
• The family is the main agent of socialization during the primary phase.
• Secondary socialization occurs later in childhood and maturity, involving other agents like schools, peer groups, organizations, the media, the workplace, and religious organizations.
• Social interactions in these contexts help individuals learn the values, norms, and beliefs of their culture.
• Socialization is a lifelong process and does not end in childhood. It can involve learning, relearning, and unlearning.
• Resocialization refers to learning new rules and norms when entering a new social world, such as moving to a different country or joining an institution like the military or prison.
• Mild resocialization occurs when individuals learn a new language, customs, or etiquette, while extreme resocialization involves a complete change in rules, schedules, and social interactions.
• In highly structured settings like the military, individuals must adapt to rigid schedules and ritualized meals, losing freedoms like snacking at will.
• Socialization can occur in the present, where individuals learn as they go, or in advance through anticipatory socialization.
• Anticipatory socialization involves learning about a role before entering it, such as through parenting classes for expectant parents or summer camps preparing students for college life.
• Parents, schools, and other institutions play a critical role in the socialization process.

FAMILIES

• Family systems vary widely, affecting the range of family contacts infants have across cultures.
• The mother is typically the most important individual in a child’s early life, but the nature of this relationship is influenced by the form and regularity of contact, which is conditioned by family institutions and their relation to society.
• In modern societies, early socialization typically occurs within a small-scale family context, often involving a mother, father, and perhaps one or two other children.
• In other cultures, aunts, uncles, and grandparents may live in the same household and act as caretakers, even for very young infants.
• Within American society, variations exist, such as single-parent households, children with two mother figures or father figures (e.g., divorced or same-sex parents), and women with families working outside the home.
• Despite these variations, the family remains the major agent of socialization from infancy to adolescence and beyond, linking generations.
• In premodern societies, the family determined an individual’s lifelong social position, but in modern societies, social position is not inherited, though the region and social class of the family still affect patterns of socialization.
• Children adopt behaviors characteristic of their parents, neighborhood, or community, with varying patterns of child-rearing, discipline, values, and expectations across different sectors of society.
• Sociologist Annette Lareau (2011) observed that working-class and middle-class parents take different approaches to child-rearing.
  • Working-class parents emphasize the accomplishment of natural growth, with children enjoying long periods of unstructured free time, often spent with friends and extended family.
  • Upper-middle-class parents practice concerted cultivation, actively fostering their children’s talents by enrolling them in structured educational and extracurricular activities and closely monitoring their development.
• Concerted cultivation equips children with the skills and opportunities to succeed in school and the workforce, helping them maintain their social-class position.
• Few children fully adopt their parents’ outlook, especially in the modern world, where change is pervasive and multiple socializing agents contribute to differences between the outlooks of children, adolescents, and parents.