I.
Becoming
Human: Socialization Goals and Functions of Socialization
II.
Agents
of Socialization
A. The Family
B. The School
C. Peer Groups
D. The Mass Media
E. Other Agents
III.
Gender
Socialization
A. The Linkage of Sex Roles and Gender
Roles
B. Early
Socialization
C. Socialization in the Teenage Years
D. Gender Inequality
IV.
Socialization
Through the Life Course
A. Childhood
B. Adolescence
C. Adulthood
D. Old Age
Socialization is
the process that teaches individuals to become functioning human beings who must
fit into a number groups and be productive members of a society.
Through socialization, a helpless
infant is gradually transformed into a more or less knowledgeable, more or less
cooperative member of society.
Goals and Functions of Socialization
From the point of society,
socialization has specific goals. First,
it teaches the basics of life in society.
Second, it transmits skills important to survival in the society. Third, it instills in its new members a
desire to work toward goals that the society considers important. Fourth, it teaches members how to fulfill
social roles, for only if a majority of people do os can the social system
continue to exist.
The process of socialization is not
limited to infants and children. It
continues throughout an individual’s lifetime, as there are always new rolesto
be learned and new circumstances to which to adjust. But socialization is different for children
and for adults. Children must learn how
to regulate their biological drives in socially acceptable ways.
Socialization occurs on both a
conscious and an unconscious level.
Children are deliberately taught
certain behaviors, attitudes, and values, but others are picked up
unconsciously, from overheard conversations or observed adult actions.
Agents of Socialization
Agents
of socialization are specific people, groups, and organizations who are chiefly
responsible for transforming an individual into a functioning human being;
knowledgeable in the ways of society, and possesses enough skills to survive.
Agents
of socialization may be the family, the school, peer group, one’s religion,
one’s place of work and many others.
The Family. The most important agency of socialization for most human
beings is undoubtedly the family. The
very sensitive and malleable early years of life, when we are defenseless and
dependent, have traditionally been spent almost exclusively within the family
context. It is there that we first learn
about intimacy, emotions, power, and other elements of human
relationships. It is there also, that we
begin to learn the components of culture and social structure, including
language, norms and values.
The School. School is a primary
agent of socialization in industrial societies, and schooling begins very early
for some children. The manifest
function of formal education is to transmit the skills and values
thought appropriate for earning a living and for being a “good citizen”. Accordingly, schools teach reading, writing,
arithmetic, and so on.
Manifest function means intended purpose.
Latent function means unintended consequences.
Hidden curriculum refers to values
that, though not explicitly taught, form an inherent part of the school’s “message”.
Schools also have latent
functions that help the social system. First, by placing children under
the control of teachers-people who are not their friends, neighbors or
relatives-schooling exposes them to new attitudes, values and ways of lloking
at the world. Secnd, as children move
beyond a world in which they may have been the most exclusive focus of doting
parents, they learn to be part of a large group of people of similar age. Third, children learn universality-that the
same rules and the same sanctions apply to everyone, regardless of who their
parents are or how special they may be at home.
Fourth, children gradually come to realize that their behavior is
recorded in permanent, official records that will have important and lasting
consequences. Such latent functions help
prepare the child to take a role in the world beyond the family.
The Peer Group. The agency of socialization that is probably second in
importance to the family is the peer
group. Example of peer groups are
friends, clubs, gangs and “kids” in the neighborhood.”
The family is a hierarchical group, with
parents in a position of authority and dominance over the children. In a peer group, however, children find more
egalitarian relationships because no one child in the group is normally
dominant in all respects. There is
therefore more give-and-take, which gives children the opportunity to learn how
to relate to others in a cooperative framework.
The peer group helps substantially in
the transition that is required.
Peer groups offer young people an
identity that supports some independence from their families. This offer is especially important in
industrial societies where young people are typically isolated from the
statuses and rewards of the adult world.
The peer group offers an alternative status and reward system.
Mass Media are
the various forms of communication that reach a large audience without any
personal contact between the senders and the receivers of the messages.
The Mass Media. The mass media as an agent of socialization
may be newspapers, magazines, books, television, radio, movies and videos. These agents of socialization introduce the
individual to an extraordinarily diverse array of people who are “known” only
indirectly sports figures, historic personages, politicians, authors, columnists,
announcers, disc-jockeys, talk-show hosts, newscasters, musicians, and even
ordinary people interviewed in eyewitness news report.
The media provide instant coverage of social events and social changes,
ranging from news and opinions to fads and fashions. They offer role models, viewpoints and
glimpses of lifestyles that people might otherwise never have access to.
Other agents. The may be
influenced by many other agents of socialization – religious groups, youth
organizations, and later in life, such agents as corporations or other employers
and voluntary associations like clubs, political movements, and retirement
homes.
Socialization into Gender
People have long been preoccupied
with what it means to be male or female.
In all cultures, being a man or a woman is not limited to one’s biological
sex. Being a man means that one is
likely to be “masculine”, and being a woman means that one is likely to be
“feminine”. Thus not only do we have a
gender or sex (male or female), we also have a gender role (masculine or
feminine). Emotions and occupations tend
to be characterized as masculine or feminine.
The Linkage of Sex
Roles and Gender Roles
Although the term “sex roles” and “gender roles” are often used interchangeably, there is an important
difference between them. The term “sex roles”
has come to mean behaviors determined by biological sex, such as menstruation,
erection and seminal ejaculation. The
term “gender roles” has cme to mean
entirely socially created expectations of masculine and feminine behavior. These expectations are initiated and
perpetuated by the institutions and values of a paticular society. Thus, bearing and nursing children may be a
feminine sex role, but raising children is a gender role.
Gender Role is
a social role associated with feminine
or masculine behavior.
Sex Roles are
behaviors determined by biological sex.
While the sexes are far more similar
that different, early research on male and female characteristics tended to
concentrate on biological differences between the sexes. For example, women bear children, and so they
have to raise them. Later researches recognized that most differences between
the sexes are based on the differential socialization of men and women. This gender-role model tried to specify the
ways in which males and females are socialized to be what is considered
masculine or feminine in a particular culture.
Early Socialization into Gender Roles
Parents are the earliest and probably
the major influences in the gender-role socialization of young childre. Parents often have different expectations for
the sexes. In a hospital study of thirty
pairs of new parents, fifteen with boys and fifteen with girls, the parents
were askes to describe the characteristics oftheir infants. They tended to describe their children
according to the typical sterotypes of the culture. Boy babies were describes as firmer,
larger-featrued, more alert and stronger.
Girls are more described as mre delicate, more fine-featured, softer and
smaller.
Parents are also more likely to treat
male and female infants and children in ways consistent with how they view the
sexes.
As infants become toddlers, parental
interaction with them continues to be sex-differentiated. Both parents characterized their relationship
to their daughters as having more warmth and physical closeness.
As children get older, their parents
may also attempt to teach them “sex-appropriate” skills. A father may throw a ball to his son, and a mother may teach her
daughter how to sew or bake cookies.
While some cross-sex behavior may be taught – for example, a boy is
taught to cook or a girl to fish- it is unlikely that it is stressed unless the
father is looking for a substitute son in his daughter or the mother is looking
for a substitute daughter in her son.
Children learn from their parents by
seeing what their parents do.
The gender-role messages implied in
girls’ and boys’ toys may be further emphasized in the games they play.
Boys and girls also learn to relate
in different ways to their playmates.
Girls are more likely to play in smaller groups
Socialization in the Teenage Years
In adolescence, prescriptions for
certain kinds of genderrole behaviors may be intensified: for example, boys may
be pressured to control their emotions even more rigidly than they did
before. In other instances,
prescriptions for gender-role behavior may be modified; for example, a girl who
was a tomboy in elementary school may feel pressured to be more “feminine” and
may sense an increased emphasis by her peers on being pretty and popular rather
than being acive.
In many ways, values for adoloescent
boys are simply intensified versions of the values learned in early
childhood. In particular masculine, or
“macho,” themes intensify. A young boy
was always expected to be tough and scrappy, now it is absolutely essential for
him, to hold his own in fihts and to be physically tough enough to “take it”
while participating in sports. A young
boy was ideally expected never to cry or get upset in any but ang angry
fashion. He was always supposed to be
good at sports and other activities; now that pressure is increased. In addition, there are new pressures to be
good (but not too good) at activities that will lead to occupational success
and to be good at sex and heterosexual relationships. These pressures are intense and are
continuaaly present. The penalty of not
living up to the norms of being tough, being “cool”, and being good is severe:
rejection or simply being ignored.
Gender and Inequality
In most societies, there is an
apparent social inequality that can be gleaned in society’s social norms and
language. Some early anthropologists
such as Lewis Morgan believed that females initially had higher social and
political status than males, and then through time that pattern was reversed.
Male dominance – the social situation in which more power and prestige
are given to men than to women.
Sexism – is
the ideology that supports gender inequality and justifies male dominance.
Male dominance has become more
prevalent in present societies. Males
tend to have inherent cultural advantages.
Males are more likely to be political leaders, economic tycoons and
spiritual heads. In the workplace, men
and women receive significantly different economic rewards with more men
occupying higher positions. Even if men
and women work in the same fields, men tend to receive better pay.
Even in social life, society gives
more latitude to men than women. They
are allowed longer and more late nights than their female counterparts. They can have a liberated relationship with the
opposite sex and be viewed as “macho” but a female who does the same is
labelled as “wild”.
Even in language, society tends to favor men than women. Terms such as chairman, freshman, mankind,
policeman to refer to both sexes had been objected as having gender bias or are sexist. Society
argues that the use ofthese masculine terms reinforces the idea that humanity
is male and women are outsiders. They
suggest that instead of chairman, it should be chairperson, mankind should be
persons or humankind policeman as police officers, freshmen should be
“freshies” and so forth. The adoption of more neutral ways of expressing gender
may lessen gender bias and will also affect gender relations.
V.
Socialization Through The Life Course
Kubler-Ross five stages of death and dying
The human life course seems at first glance to be purely a matter of
biology. But the sequence of birth,
childhood, maturity, old age, and death is also a social one, for its length,
stages, challenges, and opportunities depend very much on the society in which
one lives.
Every society imposes its own conception of a life course upon the
physical process of growing up and growing old.
Consequently, the period from birth to death is arbitrarily sliced up
into a series of stages, each offering distinctive rights and responsibilities
to the relevant age group.
Childhood is defined as roughly the first 12 years of an individual’s
life.
Childhood. Childhood is defined as roughly the
first 12 years of life. It seems a
“natural” part of the life course to us, yet the very concept of childhood is a
comparatively recent one: pre-industrial societies typically did not recognize
it as a separate stage of life. Instead
the young passed directly from a prolonged infancy into their adult roles. There was no separate way of life reserved
for childhood, with the distinctive songs, toys, privileges, and activities
that we take for granted today.
Even in early industrial societies, children continued to perform adult
economic roles: in the United States in 1900, a quarter of the boys aged ten to
fourteen were in the labor force. Some
countries that are now in the early stages of industrialization still have only
a limited concept of childhood and continue to make use od child labor. In such countries, as Morocco, India, and
Colombia, for example, tens of millions of children between the ages of five and
thirteen work full time, even in factories and coal mines.
Children are socialized quite differently from adults: they have
distinctive forms of dress and their own separate spheres of activity, ranging
from children’s TV and games to
kindergartens elementary schools.
They are exempted from playing full economic roles and have miniman
social responsibilities. Adults tend to
romanticize childhood as a period of carefree innocence, and they take pains to
protect children from poremature knowledge of such taboo subjects as death and
sex.
Adoloscence is the stage in the life course that
extends roughly from age 13 to age 20.
Adoloscence. The years between puberty and adolescence were never
considered a separate stage of life until societies became industrialized. However, in simple, pre-industrial societies
there were only two main stages of life, immaturity and adulthood. In such societies the change from one status
to another was usually a clear and abrupt one, often marked, in the case of the
males, by initiation ceremonies involving great pain and feats of
endurace. As soon as these rituals were
completed, the younf person became an adult, with the same rights and
responsibilities as other mature members of the society.
In the course of their development, modern industrial societies have
added a new stage to the life course: instead of passing directly from
prolonged infancy to adulthood, we go through adolescence, the stage in the
life course that extends roughly from the puberty to age 20. This new stage is a modern invention
introduced into the life course as a consequence of extended education.
Because it is a relatively new stage of the life course in a rapidly
changing society, adolescence is an ambiguous and often confusing period,
marked by vaguely defined rights and responsibilities. The adolescent is said to be in a limbo,
neither child nor adult.
Adulthood is the stage in the life course which
begins at some point between the late teens and the early thirties depending on
social background.
Adulthood. Adulthood is the period during which most of life’s
accomplishments typically occur. Having
amassed considerable learning, people embark on careers and raise families of
their own.
Erik Erikson divided adulthood
into three stages: young adulthood,
in which the individual must resolve the dilemma of committing to anothger
person or remaining self-absorbed; middle
age, in which one must decide wheter to establish and guide the future
generation or fail to meet the need to be needed; and old age, in which one either maturely accepts
how one had lived life or is disillusioned with life and afraid of death.
The years of young adulthood are
spent in forming a family, learning parenting, and solidifying career goals.
Middle age, after the age of 40, is often marked by crises. Men feel trapped in
jobs or careers they never really liked.
Marriages can begin to feel stale.
Old age is defined as beginning at age 65 and
is of course, the stage that culminates in death.
Old age. The experience of growing old, like other stages of life,
involves more than biological change, it is also a matter of culture. In pre-industrial societies, old age
typically confers great influence and respect for the elderly. The aged are respected for their wisdom and
hold an honored place in the family and the community. They have many roles to fill-familial,
social, religious, and even economic, for they typically work until advanced
old age and control most land and other wealth.
In modern industrialized societies, the situation is quite
different. The knowledge of the elderly
may seem obsolete, their authority may be negligible, and they may even be
unwanted by their children: often, the best they can do is attempt not to be a
“burden”. There are few useful roles for
the aged: they generally retire around age sixty-five, and are left with little
or no part to play in economic life.
Life Expectancy is the length of life the average
newborn will enjoy.
Life Span is the length of life possible in the
species.
The reason for this distinctively modern taboo seems to be that death is
the only natural process which remains beyond the control of advanced
technology. Modern medicine, nutrition,
and sanitation have all helped to extend the life expectancy – the length of life the average newborn will
enjoy. But they have had little, any
effect on the life span – the maximum
length of life possible in the species.
The final point of the life course – the annihilation of the self, the
ultimate confrontation with the unknown – mocks the claim to human mastery of
the world, and people therefore try to deny the mystery and power of death by
excluding it from their discussions and thoughts.
Our understanding of death and dying has been greatly increased by the
pioneering work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who conducted extensive interviews
with dying people. She suggested that
there are five stages which a terminally ill person often proceeds after
learning the truth. The first is denial, usually expresed in disbelief – “It can’t
be happening to me.” The second stage is anger – “Why me?” The third stage is bargaining – an implicit
agreemen to go willingly if God or fate will just allow the dying person to
live a little longer, perhaps until some significant event, such as family
birthday or wedding. The fourth stage is
depression,
a state of a deep anxiety over the loss of self and the loss of one’s
family. The final stage is acceptance,
in which the dying person approaches death with true peace of mind.
