Social Environments and Early Socialization

The environment in which a person is socialized has a powerful effect on his or her personality and behaviour.

Urie Bronfenbrenner summarizes the conclusions of numerous studies with these propositions:

• In order to develop normally, a child needs the enduring involvement of one or more adults in care of and joint activity with the child.

• This requires public policies that provide opportunity, resources, encouragement, and time for parenthood.

Agencies of Socialization

As we have already discussed in the last lecture that agencies of socialization are the groups of people, along with the interactions that occur within those groups, that influence a person's social development. Within these agencies one finds a great deal of anticipatory socialization, in which the individual plays at a role that he or she is likely to assume later in life.
The family is the primary agency of socialization.

• Schools are the most important agency of socialization outside the family. Conflicts may arise between parents and school personnel over what should be taught in schools.

• Scout troops, churches, and leagues of all kinds are among the agencies of socialization found in many communities.

• Peer groups (interacting groups of people of about the same age) tend to be the dominant agency of socialization in middle and late adulthood. When children's peer groups are faced with conflict and social change, they often       organize themselves in gangs.

• The mass media are also an important agency of socialization. The effect of television viewing on children and adolescents is a subject of intensive research.

Socialization through the Life Course

A person’s core identity, the part of the self formed in early childhood, does not change easily later in life.

The roles people play during their life course can be influenced by social changes, changes in a society’s culture, the impact of new friends, and occupational mobility.

In any new activity the newcomer or recruit must learn a new set of norms associated with the roles of the organization.

Sometimes people undergo resocialization to correct patterns of social learning that they and others find detrimental.

Erik Erikson emphasized the role of identification in the formation of the personality. Identification occurs when individuals choose adult role models and attempt to imitate their behaviour.