Reminders

· Write 250+ words and include a Word Count (WC) before your reference(s).

· Appropriate APA formatting including a title page, in-text citations, and references are required.

Required Sources

· Read  Chapter 4  Socialization,  in the Schaefer textbook

· Specifically, the section on Agents of Socialization

Assignment

Discuss what socialization means and the difference between nature and nurture in terms of what makes us who we are. Pick three words that describe you as a person and state what role nature or nurture played in each of these description of yourself.  Discuss what agents of socialization is and choose any t wo agents of socialization and discuss how each has influenced you in becoming who you are.  

APA Formatting Resources

Make sure to include APA formatted in-text citations and references to the video and the textbook chapters.

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THE ROLE OF SOCIALIZATION

Social Environment: The Impact of Isolation

The Influence of Heredity

THE SELF AND SOCIALIZATION

Sociological Approaches to the Self

Psychological Approaches to the Self

AGENTS OF SOCIALIZATION

Family

School

Peer Group

Mass Media and Technology

Workplace

Religion and the State

SOCIALIZATION THROUGHOUT THE LIFE COURSE

The Life Course

Anticipatory Socialization and Resocialization

ROLE TRANSITIONS THROUGHOUT THE LIFE COURSE

The Sandwich Generation

Adjusting to Retirement

SOCIAL POLICY AND SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH: CHILDCARE AROUND THE WORLD

Looking at the Issue

Applying Sociology

Initiating Policy

Take the Issue With You

Boxes

Sociology on Campus: Impression Management by Students

Research Today: Rumspringa : Raising Children Amish Style

Taking Sociology to Work: Rakefet Avramovitz, Program Administrator, Childcare Law Center

Our Wired World: Teens Controlling Access to Their Social Media

Social Policy and Sociological Research: Childcare Around the World

Socialization is the lifelong process whereby people learn the attitudes, values, and behaviors appropriate to individuals as members of a particular culture. Socialization occurs through human interaction and helps us to discover how to behave properly. It provides for the transmission of culture from one generation to the next, to ensure the long-term continuance of a society. Socialization experiences help to shape personality—a person’s typical patterns of attitudes, needs, characteristics, and behavior.

Under normal circumstances, environmental factors interact with hereditary factors in influencing the socialization process. Case studies—such as those of Isabelle and the Romanian orphans—and primate studies support the necessity of socialization in development. Conversely, twin studies have addressed the influence of hereditary factors on personality development.

The self is a distinct identity that sets us apart from others. It continues to develop and change throughout our lives. Sociologists Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead (pioneers of the interactionist approach), and Erving Goffman have all furthered our understanding about development of the self. Cooley’s looking-glass self suggests that our sense of self results from how we present ourselves to others, how others evaluate us, and how we internalize or assess those evaluations. Mead outlined a process by which the self emerges in early childhood: the preparatory stage, in which children merely imitate those around them; the play stage, in which children become aware of symbols and begin to engage in role taking; and the game stage, in which children become involved in complex social situations involving multiple positions or roles. Instrumental to Mead’s view are the concepts of the generalized other (attitudes, viewpoints, and expectations of society) and significant others (individuals most important in the development of the self). Goffman suggested that many of our daily activities involve attempts to convey impressions of who we are ( impression management). His view has been termed the dramaturgical approach. Goffman also drew attention to facework, the efforts people make to maintain the proper image and avoid public embarrassment.

Psychologists, such as Sigmund Freud, have stressed the role of inborn drives in the development of the self. Child psychologist Jean Piaget identified four stages of personality development in his cognitive theory of development (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational). Piaget viewed social interaction as key to development.

Lifelong socialization involves many different social forces and agents of socialization. Family is considered the most important of the socialization agents and plays a key role in exposing children to cultural assumptions around gender. The term gender role refers to expectations regarding the proper behavior, attitudes, and activities of males and females. Schools are another agent of socialization concerned with teaching students the values and customs of the larger society. Peer groups often serve as a transitional source to adulthood. The mass media have an impact on the socialization process that sociologists have also begun to consider. Workplaces can serve as socialization agents by teaching appropriate behavior within an occupational environment. Additionally, social scientists have increasingly recognized the importance of religion and the state as agents of socialization because of their impact on the life course.

Sociologists who use the life course approach look closely at the social factors that influence people throughout their lives, from birth to death. Over the course of our lives, we may encounter points at which certain transitions from one social position to another are dramatized or validated outwardly; these stages are known as rites of passage. Two types of socialization occur: anticipatory socialization (refers to the process of rehearsing for future roles) and resocialization (refers to discarding former behavior patterns and accepting new ones). Resocialization is particularly intense when it occurs within a total institution, an institution that regulates all aspects of a person’s life under a single authority. Goffman identified four common traits of total institutions. He suggested people often lose their individuality within total institutions and may undergo a humiliating ritual known as a degradation ceremony.

Although how we move through the life course varies dramatically according to our personal preferences and circumstances, certain common transitional stages have been identified, including entering the adult world, the midlife transition, and retirement. The midlife crisis is a stressful period of self-evaluation that commonly begins at about age 40. The sandwich generation consists of adults who simultaneously try to meet the competing needs of their parents and their children. Gerontologist Robert Atchley has identified several distinct phases of the retirement experience, which suggests retirement is not a single transition but rather a series of adjustments. Recent improvements in health care have given older Americans new choices in where to live, and many now congregate in naturally occurring retirement communities ( NORCs).

Childcare programs have an enormous influence on the development of young children—an influence that has grown with the movement of more and more women into the paid labor force. Day care centers have become the functional equivalent of the nuclear family in the United States, as 88% of employed mothers depend on others to care for their children, and 30% of mothers who aren’t employed have regular care arrangements. Although research suggests that high-quality childcare centers do not adversely affect the socialization of children, wide variation in the quality of childcare and government policies from one state to another make generalizations about childcare difficult.

Conflict theorists raise concerns about the cost of day care, especially for lower-class families. Feminist theorists echo these concerns and suggest that high-quality childcare receives little government support because it is seen as “merely a way to let women work.” Childcare workers’ average annual salary in the United States is currently right at the poverty level for a family of three.

When policy makers decide that childcare is desirable, they must determine the degree to which taxpayers should subsidize it. Policies regarding childcare outside the home vary throughout the world. In Sweden and Denmark, one-half to two-thirds of preschoolers are in government-subsidized childcare. In Japan, the availability of day care has not kept pace with the growing number of mothers remaining in the labor force. European parents are increasingly having to cobble together childcare using after-school programs and both friends and relatives.

Introduction

• Excerpt from sociologist Lindsey Feldman’s field notes, taken during her 15 months observing crews of prison inmates who battle wildfires in the West. She studied the wide variation between the social roles of the crew members as inmates and their social roles as heroic firefighters.

I. The Role of Socialization

• The nature versus nurture debate has evolved to a general acceptance of interaction between the variables of heredity, environment, and socialization.

A. Social Environment: The Impact of Isolation

• The need for human interaction is evident in actual case studies.

1. Extreme Isolation: Isabelle

• Isabelle lived in seclusion for 6 years. She could not speak and did not display reactions or emotions typical of humans. After a period of intense language and behavioral therapy, Isabelle became well adjusted.

2. Extreme Neglect: Romanian Orphans

• Babies in orphanages lay in cribs for 18–20 hours a day, with little care from adults. The children grew up fearful of human contact and prone to antisocial behavior. They have made progress with supervision from attentive caregivers and specialists.

3. Primate Studies

• Harry Harlow tested rhesus monkeys for the effects of isolation and concluded that isolation had a damaging effect on the monkeys.

B. The Influence of Heredity

• Twin studies reveal that both genetic factors and socialization experiences are influential in human development. Example: Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe.

• Newer and more sophisticated statistical techniques, and the 2,700 twin studies involving 14.5 million twins conducted internationally, have supplemented the Minnesota Twin research. The conclusion has been that it is not nature versus nurture but nature and nurture that impact human development.

II. The Self and Socialization

• The self is a distinct identity that sets each of us apart from others. The interactionist perspective is useful in understanding development of the self.

A. Sociological Approaches to the Self

1. Cooley: Looking-Glass Self

• According to Cooley, the self is a product of social interactions with others. There are three phases of the looking-glass self: (1) We imagine how we present ourselves to others; (2) we imagine how others evaluate us; and (3) we develop a feeling about ourselves as a result of those impressions. Example: A student’s sense of self is changed after receiving criticism from a teacher.

• A subtle but important aspect of Cooley’s theory is that the looking-glass self-results from an individual’s “imagination” of how others view them. Thus, we can develop self-identities based on incorrect perceptions of how others see us.

2. Mead: Stages of the Self

• The preparatory stage consists of children imitating people around them. Gradually, children begin to understand the use of symbols.

• The play stage consists of children pretending to be other people, like an actor “becoming” a character. Role taking is the process of mentally assuming the perspective of another and responding from that imagined viewpoint. Through role taking, children learn to see the world from the perspectives of other people.

• During the game stage, children grasp their own social positions, as well as everyone else’s position around them. Games serve as a microcosm of society. Through this process, children learn to assume their positions (or status) relative to the positions of others.

• The term generalized other refers to the attitudes, viewpoints, and expectations of others in society that an individual takes into account before acting in a particular way.

3. Mead: Theory of the Self

• Children picture themselves as the focus of everything around them. As a person matures, the self changes and begins to consider the reactions of others.

• Mead used the term significant others to refer to those individuals who are most important in the person’s development.

4. Goffman: Presentation of the Self

• Impression management involves an individual’s slanting their presentation of the self to create a distinctive appearance and to satisfy particular audiences.

• The dramaturgical approach is based upon people behaving as actors by putting forth an image believed to be pleasing to others.

• Goffman’s facework involves people trying to maintain or save an image or face. Example: An individual may feign employment to avoid embarrassment.

B. Psychological Approaches to the Self

• Freud stressed the role of inborn drives. The self has components that work in opposition to each other. Part of us seeks limitless pleasure, while another part seeks rational behavior.

• Piaget found that although newborns have no sense of self in the sense of a looking-glass image, they are self-centered, understanding only “me.” As they mature, they are gradually socialized into social relationships.

• In his cognitive theory of development, Piaget identified four stages of child development: (1) sensorimotor stage (child uses senses to make discoveries), (2) preoperational stage (child begins to use words and symbols), (3) concrete operational stage (child engages in more logical thinking), and (4) formal operational stage (adolescent is capable of sophisticated abstract thought, and can deal with ideas and values in a logical manner).

• Social interaction is the key to development.

III. Agents of Socialization

A. Family

• Family is the most important socializing agent. Parents minister to the baby’s needs by feeding, cleansing, carrying, and comforting.

• In the United States, social development includes exposure to cultural assumptions regarding gender and race. Example: experiment with polishing the fingernails of a friend of the opposite sex

• Parents guide children into gender roles deemed appropriate by society.

B. School

• Schools have an explicit mandate to socialize children to societal norms.

• Functionalists indicate schools fulfill a function by socializing children, whereas conflict theorists suggest schools reinforce divisive aspects of society, especially social class. Example: A teacher’s praising boys may reinforce sexist attitudes.

C. Peer Group

• As a child grows older, family becomes somewhat less important in social development, while peer groups increasingly assume the role of Mead’s significant others.

D. Mass Media and Technology

• Media innovations have become important agents of socialization. A U.S. study found that 95% of teens aged 13–17 have a smartphone and 45% say they are online “almost constantly.”

• Experts contend that digital media use should be avoided (except video-chatting) in children younger than 18–24 months. If parents want to introduce digital media for children aged 18–24 months of age, they should choose high-quality programming and always use media together with their child.

• Cell phones are a particularly significant communications technology for people in low-income nations, but most of those same people cannot afford broadband access to the Internet.

E. Workplace

• We learn to behave appropriately within an occupation.

• The United States has the highest level of teenage employment of all industrialized nations, with growing concern regarding adverse effects of work on schooling.

• Workplace socialization changes when a person shifts to full-time employment.

F. Religion and the State

• State-run agencies are increasingly influential in the life course.

• Government and organized religion have reinstituted some of the rites of passage once observed in earlier societies.

IV. Socialization Throughout the Life Course

A. The Life Course

• Celebrating rites of passage is a means of dramatizing and validating changes in a person’s status.

• The life course approach looks closely at the social factors that influence people throughout their lives, from birth to death, including gender and income. Certain life events like marriage, completion of schooling, and birth of one’s first child mark the passage into adulthood.

B. Anticipatory Socialization and Resocialization

• Anticipatory socialization refers to a person rehearsing for a role they will likely assume in the future. Example: high school students preparing for college by looking at college websites.

• Resocialization refers to discarding the former sense of self and behavior patterns and accepting new behavior patterns. Examples: prisons, political indoctrination camps, and religious conversion settings.

• Goffman suggested resocialization is particularly effective in a total institutional environment (prisons, mental hospitals, and military organizations).

• Individuality is often lost in total institutions, as the individual becomes secondary in the environment and experiences the humiliation of degradation ceremonies.

V. Role Transitions Throughout the Life Course

• Role transitions are transitional stages during the life course, that is, entering adulthood, midlife crisis.

A. The Sandwich Generation

• This refers to adults who are trying to meet the competing needs of their parents and children.

B. Adjusting to Retirement

• The retirement stage today is complicated by economic deterioration.

1. Phases of Retirement

• Robert Atchley’s phases of retirement include preretirement, the near phase, the honeymoon phase, the disenchantment phase, the reorientation phase, the stability phase, and the termination phase. Retirement, then, is a series of adjustments.

• The experience of retirement varies according to gender, race, and ethnicity.

Example: white males are most likely to benefit from retirement wages, as well as to have participated in a formal retirement preparation program.

2. Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities

• These involve the congregation of older Americans in areas that have gradually become informal centers for senior citizens.

VI. (Box) Social Policy and Sociological Research: Childcare Around the World

A. Looking at the Issue