4 Socialization

Who Was the Mysterious Girl in the Window?

Detective Holste and his team were shocked when they entered the house. It was the worst mess they had ever seen: infested with cockroaches, smeared with feces and urine from both people and pets, and filled with dilapidated furniture and ragged window coverings.

Detective Holste found a little girl with vacant eyes staring into the darkness. A newspaper report later described the detective’s first encounter with the child:

She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side … her ribs and collarbone jutted out … her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin…. She was naked — except for a swollen diaper.… Her name, her mother said, was Danielle. She was almost seven years old. (DeGregory, 2008)

Danielle was rushed to hospital for medical treatment and evaluation. Through extensive testing, doctors determined that, although she was severely malnourished, Danielle was able to see, hear, and vocalize normally. However, she would not look anyone in the eyes, did not know how to chew or swallow solid food, did not cry, did not respond to stimuli that would typically cause pain, and did not know how to communicate either with words or simple gestures such as nodding “yes” or “no.” Likewise, although tests showed she had no chronic diseases or genetic abnormalities, the only way she could stand was with someone holding onto her hands, and she “walked sideways on her toes, like a crab” (DeGregory, 2008).

What had happened to Danielle? Beyond the basic requirements for survival, she had been neglected. Based on their investigation, social workers concluded that she had been left almost entirely alone in rooms like the one where she was found. Without regular interaction—the holding, hugging, talking, the explanations and demonstrations given to most young children—she had not learned to walk, speak, eat, interact, play or even understand the world around her. From a sociological point of view, Danielle had not had been socialized.

Socialization is the process through which people are taught to be members of a society. Socialization describes the ways that people come to understand society’s norms and expectations, to accept society’s beliefs, and to be aware of societal values. It also describes how people become aware of themselves and reflect on the suitability of their behaviour in their interactions. Socialization occurs as people engage and disengage in a series of roles throughout life. Each role, like the role of son or daughter, student, friend, employee, etc., is defined by the behaviour expected of the person.

Socialization is not the same as socializing (interacting with others, like family, friends, and coworkers). Socialization occurs through socializing. As Danielle’s story illustrates, even the most basic of human activities are learned. Even physical tasks like sitting, standing and walking had not automatically developed for Danielle as she grew. Without socialization, Danielle had not learned about the material culture of her society (the physical used by a culture): For example, she could not hold a spoon, bounce a ball or use a chair for sitting. She also had not learned nonmaterial culture, such as its beliefs, values, and norms. She had no understanding of the concept of family, did not know cultural expectations for using a bathroom, and had no sense of modesty. Most importantly, she hadn’t learned to use the symbols that make up language. And through language we learn who we are, how we fit with other people, and our natural and social worlds.

The complex process of socialization takes place through interaction with many individuals, groups, and social institutions.  Socialization is not only critical to children. Socialization is a lifelong process that prepares us for new social environments and expectations we encounter.

4.1. Why Socialization Matters

Socialization is critical both to individuals and to societies. Socialization shows how humans are interconnected with their social world. First, through teaching culture to new members that a society perpetuates itself. If new generations of a society do not learn its way of life, it ceases to exist. Whatever is distinctive about a culture must be transmitted to those who join it in order for a society to survive.

For Canadian culture to continue, for example, children in Canada must learn about cultural values related to democracy: They have to learn the norms of voting, as well as how to use material objects such as a ballot. Children learn the etiquette of eating in a restaurant. There are many ideas and objects that Canadians teach children in hopes of keeping the society’s way of life going.

Socialization is just as important to us as individuals. Through social interaction we gradually become able to see ourselves through the eyes of others, learn who we are and how we fit into the world. In addition, to function successfully in society, we need to learn the basics of both material and nonmaterial culture: everything from how to dress to what is suitable attire for a specific occasion; from when we sleep to what we sleep on; and from what is considered appropriate to eat for dinner to how to use the stove to prepare it. Most importantly, we must learn language—whether it is verbal or through signs—to communicate and to think. As Danielle’s tragic situation demonstrates, without socialization, we literally have no self. We are unable to function socially.

Nature versus Nurture

Some believe who we are is a result of nurture—the relationships and caring that surround us. Others argue that who we are is based entirely in genetics. According to this nature perspective, our personality, interests, and talents are set before birth. Who we are depends on nature.

One way researchers try to prove the impact of nature is by studying twins. Some studies followed identical twins who were raised separately. These twins shared the same genetics but were socialized in different ways. Studying how identical twins raised apart are the same or different can give insight into how we are shaped by our genetic makeup versus our social environment.

For example, in 1968, twin girls born to a mentally ill mother were put up for adoption. However, they were also separated and raised in different households. They became one of five pairs of twins who were made subjects of a scientific study (Flam, 2007).

In 2003, the two women, then aged 35, were reunited. Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein sat together in awe, feeling like they were looking into a mirror.  Not only did they look alike, but they behaved alike, using the same hand gestures and facial expressions (Spratling, 2007). Studies like this point to the genetic roots of our temperament and behaviour.

On the other hand, studies of identical twins have difficulty accounting for differences in the development of inherited diseases. In the case of schizophrenia, studies show a strong biological component to the disease. The closer our family connection to someone with schizophrenia, the more likely we will develop it. However, even if our identical twin develops schizophrenia, we are less than 50 percent likely to develop it ourselves. Why is it not 100 percent? What occurs to produce the difference between genetically identical twins (Carey, 2012)?

Though genetics and hormones play an important role in human behaviour, biological explanations of human behaviour are incomplete from a sociological point of view. This is especially true when biology tries to explain complex aspects of human social life such as homosexuality, male aggressiveness, and female spatial skills. Biological explanation usually involves three components: the identification of a supposedly universal quality or trait of human behaviour, an attribution of a genetic source of the behavioural trait, and an argument why this behaviour makes it more likely that the genes will be passed to descendants. The conclusion of this reasoning is that this behaviour or quality is hard-wired and difficult to change (Lewontin, 1991).

However, the argument that males are naturally aggressive because of their hormonal structure does not consider the huge variations in the meaning or practice of aggression between cultures, nor the huge variations in definitions of aggression in different situations. Many men are not aggressive by any definition. And both men and women both have “male” hormones like testosterone. More interesting for the sociologist is that men who are not aggressive often get called sissies. This indicates that male aggression must be more about norms of male culture than genetic or hormonal.

Sociology is more concerned with the effect that socialization has on human behaviour: the nurture side of the nature versus nurture debate. Despite growing up apart, did Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein share common ethnic, class or religious characteristics? What happens to people with schizophrenia in different societies? How does their social role integrate people with schizophrenia into a society (or not)? Whatever the role of genes or biology, genes are never expressed in a vacuum. Environmental influence always matters.

Individual and Society

How do sociologists explain conformity and individual uniqueness? How are individual differences, individual choice, or individuality possible if human development is about assuming socially defined roles? How can an individual have agency, the ability to choose and act independently of external constraints? Western society values individuality, being oneself or resisting peer pressure and other pressures to conform. Where society ends and where the individual begins is important in sociology.

Sociologists argue that individuals vary because their social environments vary. Socialization happens in different social environments—environments made up of the responses of others. Each environment imposes unique requirements. In one family, for example, children are permitted unlimited access to TV and video games; in another, there are no TV or video games. When growing up, children adapt and develop different play and recreation strategies. Parents and others respond to the child’s choices, either by reinforcing them or encouraging different choices. Through differences in social environments and responses, children gradually develop consistent relationships to world. Each child is unique because each child occupies a unique place in society and social relationships.

Sociologists recognize the importance of socialization for healthy individual and societal development. But how do sociologists from different theoretical paradigms approach this topic?

Structural functionalists would say that socialization is essential to society, both because it trains members to operate successfully in society and because socialization transmits culture to new generations. Individuals learn different social roles as they age. The roles come with norms and social expectations. These allow for predictable interactions between people.

A critical sociologist might argue that socialization reproduces inequality from generation to generation. Socialization conveys different expectations and norms to those with different social characteristics. For example, individuals are socialized with different expectations about their place in society according to their gender, social class, and race. As in the life of Chris Langan, this creates different and unequal opportunities and, therefore, differences between unique individuals.

A symbolic interactionist might study face-to-face exchanges and symbolic communication. For example, dressing baby boys in blue and baby girls in pink is one small way that messages are conveyed about differences in gender roles. For the symbolic interactionist, though, how these messages are constructed and interpreted are defined by the specific situation.

4.2. Agents of Socialization

Socialization helps people learn to function successfully in their social worlds. How does socialization occur? How do we learn to use the objects of society’s material culture?  How do we adopt the beliefs, values, and norms of 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.

Social Group Agents

Social groups provide the first experiences of socialization. Families, and later peer groups, communicate expectations and reinforce norms. People first learn to use the objects of material culture in these settings. People are introduced to the beliefs and values of society in these social groups, too.

Family

Family is the first agent of socialization. Parents, siblings, grandparents, members of an extended family all teach a child. 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 “neighbours”); and
• how the world works (what is “real” and what is “imagined”).

Families do not socialize children in a vacuum, however. Many social factors affect how a family raises children. For example, we can use sociological imagination to recognize that individual behaviours are affected by the historical period. Sixty years ago, it would not have been considered strict for a father to hit his son with a belt for misbehaviour, but today that action might be considered child abuse.

Sociologists recognize that racialization, social class, religion, and other social factors play an important role in socialization. For example, poor families may emphasize obedience and conformity when raising children, while wealthy families may emphasize judgment and creativity (National Opinion Research Center, 2008). This may be because working-class parents have less education and more repetitive-task jobs for which the ability to follow rules and to conform helps. Wealthy parents tend to have more education and often work in careers that require creative problem solving, so they teach their children behaviours that would benefit these positions. This means that children are socialized to take the types of jobs their parents already have, reproducing the class system (Kohn, 1977). Likewise, children are socialized by gender norms, perceptions of race and ethnicity, and class-related behaviours.

In Sweden, for instance, stay-at-home fathers are common. Government provides subsidized time off work—68 weeks for families with newborns at 80 percent of regular earnings—with the option of 52 of those weeks shared between both parents, with eight additional weeks for each parent. This encourages fathers to spend at least eight weeks at home with their newborns (Marshall, 2008). As one stay-at-home dad said, being home to take care of his baby son “is a real fatherly thing to do. I think that’s very masculine” (Associated Press, 2011). Overall, 90 percent of Swedish men participate in the paid leave program.

Canada allows for fewer weeks of paid parental leave at a smaller percent of regular earnings. Fewer fathers participate.

Researchers note that a father’s involvement in child raising has a positive effect on the parents’ relationship, the father’s personal growth, and the social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development of children (Marshall, 2008). How will this differ in Sweden and Canada because of the different paternal leave policies?

Peer Groups

A peer group is made up of people who are not necessarily friends but who are similar in age and social status and who share interests. Peer group socialization begins in the earliest years: for example, when kids on a playground teach younger children the norms about taking turns or the rules of a game.

Peer groups become more important to adolescents as they become more independent and develop an identity separate from parents. This is often a period of parental-child conflict when parental values conflict with those of peer groups. Peer groups provide adolescents’ first major socialization experience outside the families. They are especially influential for preferences in music, style, clothing, for sharing common social activities, and for learning to engage in romantic relationships. Adolescents experiment with new experiences outside the control of parents: sexual relationships, drug and alcohol use, political stances, hair and clothing choices, and so forth.

Studies have shown, however, that parental influence balances peer group influence. Conflict between parents and teenagers is usually temporary. Families exert more influence over educational choices and political, social, and religious attitudes.

Peer groups remain important agents of social integration. The way that youth divide themselves into cliques with varying degrees of status prepares them for the way the adult world is divided into status groups. The racialized, gender, intelligence, and wealth characteristics that lead to being accepted in adolescent cliques are the same characteristics that divide people into status groups in adulthood.

Institutional Agents

The social institutions of our culture also inform our socialization. Formal institutions — like schools, workplaces, and the government — teach people how to behave in and navigate these systems. Other institutions, like the media, contribute to socialization by inundating us with messages about norms and expectations.

School

Most Canadian children spend about seven hours a day and 180 days a year in school, making school important in socialization. In elementary and junior high, compulsory education amounts to over 8,000 hours in the classroom (OECD, 2013). Students are in school not only to study math, reading, science, and other subjects—the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent function in society by socializing children into behaviours like teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks.

School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders, regularly reinforce what society expects from children. Sociologists describe this aspect of schools as the hidden curriculum, the informal teaching done by schools.

For example, North American schools have built competition into the way grades are awarded. Students learn to evaluate themselves within a hierarchical system of A, B, C, etc. students (Bowles & Gintis, 1976).

Different lessons can be taught by different instructional techniques. When children participate in a relay race or a math contest, they learn that there are winners and losers in society. When children are required to work together on a project, they practice teamwork with other people in cooperative situations. Bowles and Gintis argue that the hidden curriculum prepares children for a life of conformity in the adult world. Children learn how to deal with bureaucracy, rules, expectations, to wait their turn, and to sit still for hours during the day. The latent functions of competition, teamwork, classroom discipline, time awareness, and dealing with bureaucracy are features of the hidden curriculum.

Schools also socialize children by teaching them overtly about citizenship and nationalism. In the United States, children are taught to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Most school districts require classes about U.S. history and geography. In Canada, on the other hand, critics complain that students do not learn enough about national history, which undermines the development of a sense of shared national identity (Granatstein, 1998).

Textbooks in Canada are also continually scrutinized and revised to update attitudes toward different cultures in Canada as well as changing perspectives on historical events. Later generations are socialized to a different national or world history. For example, recent textbook editions include information about the mistreatment of First Nations, more accurately reflecting those events than textbooks of the past. Schools educate students explicitly about aspects of citizenship important for participation in a modern, heterogeneous culture.

The Workplace

Just as children spend much of their day at school, most Canadian adults spend a significant amount of time at a workplace. Although socialized into their culture since birth, workers require new socialization both in terms of material culture (such as how to operate the copy machine) and nonmaterial culture (such as whether it is okay to speak directly to the boss, or how to share refrigerator space).

Different jobs require different types of socialization. In the past, many people worked a single job until retirement. Today, people can switch jobs at least once a decade. Between the ages of 18 and 44, the average younger baby boomer held 11 different jobs (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010). People must now be socialized by a variety of work environments.

Religion

While some religious practice is informal, this section focuses on practices related to formal institutions.

Religion remains an important agent of socialization for many. Canada has many synagogues, temples, churches, mosques, and similar religious sites where people gather to worship and learn. Like other institutions, these teach participants how to interact with their material culture (like a mezuzah, a prayer rug, or a communion wafer). For some people, important ceremonies related to family structure—like marriage and birth—are connected to religious celebrations. Many religious institutions contribute to reinforcement of gender norms. From ceremonial rites of passage that reinforce the family unit, to power dynamics which reinforce gender roles, religion fosters a shared set of socialized values that are passed on through society.

Government

To be defined as an “adult” usually means being 18 years old, the age at which a person becomes legally responsible for themselves. And 65 is the start of “old age” since most people become eligible for senior benefits then. Many rites of passage today are based on age norms established by the government.

When we enter one these new categories—adult, taxpayer, senior—we must be socialized into this new role. Seniors, for example, must learn the ropes of obtaining pension benefits. This government program marks the point at which we require socialization into a new category.

Mass Media

Mass media refers to the distribution of information to a wide audience via television, newspapers, radio, and the internet. With the average person spending over four hours a day in front of the TV (and children averaging even more screen time), media greatly influences social norms (Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout, 2005; Oliveira,2013). In a 2010 survey abouttime use, Statistics Canada report that 73percent of respondents saidtheywatched2hours52minutesoftelevisiondaily(see the Participants column in Table 4.1 below).

Television continues to be the mass medium that occupies much free time of the average Canadian, but the internet is the fastest growing mass medium. In the Statistics Canada survey, daily television use declined from 77 percent to 73 percent between 1998 and 2010, but computer use increased in all age groups from 5 percent to 24 percent, and averaging 1 hour 23 minutes a day. People who played video games doubled from 3 percent to 6 percent between 1998 and 2010, and the average daily use increased from 1 hour 48 minutes to 2 hours 20 minutes (Statistics Canada, 2013). People learn about objects of material culture (like new technology, transportation, and consumer options), as well as nonmaterial culture—what is true (beliefs), what is important (values), and what is expected (norms) through mass media.

Table 4.1. Average time per day spent on various activities for participants aged 15 and over, grouped by sex, Canada, 2010

[Skip Table]
Activity group	Population			Participants			Participation rate
	Total	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female
	hours and minutes			hours and minutes			percentage
1. Television, reading, and other passive leisure	02:29	02:39	02:20	03:08	03:19	02:58	79	80	79
Watching television	02:06	02:17	01:55	02:52	03:03	02:41	73	75	71
Reading books, magazines, newspapers	00:20	00:18	00:23	01:26	01:29	01:25	24	20	27
Other passive leisure	00:03	00:03	00:02	01:04	01:16	00:52	4	4	4
2. Active leisure	01:13	01:27	00:59	02:22	02:42	02:01	51	54	49
Active sports	00:30	00:37	00:23	01:54	02:12	01:34	26	28	25
Computer use	00:20	00:23	00:17	01:23	01:32	01:14	24	25	23
Video games	00:09	00:14	00:04	02:20	02:40	01:38	6	9	4
Other active leisure	00:14	00:13	00:15	02:05	02:06	02:04	11	10	12
Note: Average time spent is the average over a 7-day week. Source: Statistics Canada, General Social Survey, 2010 (Statistics Canada, 2011). Note: this survey asked approximately 15,400 Canadians aged 15 and over to report in a daily journal details of the time they spent on various activities on  a given day. Because they were reporting about a given day, the figures sited about the average use of television and other media differ from reports provided by BBM and other groups on the average weekly usage, like the figure of 4 hours per day of TV cited in Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout (2005) above.