Agents of Socialization
- Learn the agents of socialization and then general order they typically occur in.
- Understand how we are socialized through formal institutions like schools, workplaces, and the government
Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social worlds. How does the process of socialization occur? How do we learn to use the objects of our society’s material culture? How do we come to adopt the beliefs, values, and norms that represent its nonmaterial culture? This learning takes place through interaction with various agents of socialization, like peer groups and families, plus both formal and informal social institutions.
Socialization Agents
Socialization agents are a combination of social groups and social institutions that provide the first experiences of socialization. Families, early education, peer groups, the workplace, religion, government, and media all communicate expectations and reinforce norms. People first learn to use the tangible objects of material culture in these settings, as well as being introduced to the beliefs and values of society.
Family
Family is the first agent of socialization. Mothers and fathers, siblings and grandparents, plus members of an extended family, all teach a child what he or she needs to know. Familes, of course, come in all sorts of formations. Whether the young child is living with a biological parent, adopted by their parents, or exclusively raised by a sibling or a grandparent, this unit of family is what socializes the young child to the world first.
For example, they show the child how to use objects (such as clothes, computers, eating utensils, books, bikes); how to relate to others (some as “family,” others as “friends,” still others as “strangers” or “teachers” or “neighbors”); and how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”). As you are aware, either from your own experience as a child or from your role in helping to raise one, socialization includes teaching and learning about an unending array of objects and ideas.
The particular values of the family unit are central to the socialization process. If one child is raised in a family where discussion of connections to people from all races, religions, and ethnicities is both valued and practiced, this child is understanding multi-culturalism as a necessary asset in society. Conversely, a child who is raised our discussions and behaviors that explicitly favor their racial or religious group over others, the child learns that multi-culturalism is a problem to be avoided. These two children could be sitting next to each other in the same preschool classroom.
Keep in mind, however, that families do not socialize children in a vacuum. Many social factors affect the way a family raises its children. For example, we can use sociological imagination to recognize that individual behaviors are affected by the historical period in which they take place. Sixty years ago, it would not have been consi