Socialization (Curry, Jiobu and Schwirian 2008) The process by which people learn the skills, knowledge, norms

s and values of their society and by which they develop their social identity Life course The stages into which our life span is divided, such as adolescence or middle age Primary socialization Early socialization that stresses the basic knowledge and values of the society Takes place in the family Secondary socialization Following primary socialization that emphasizes synthesis, creativity, logic, emotional control, and advanced knowledge Also emphasizes reality and practicality (Mortimer and Simmons 1978) Takes place in the institutions, groups and organizations Socialization and the Life Course Through socialization, we learn the language, values, rules and knowledge of the culture in which we are born We also develop a sense of who we area and we form a social identity At each stage of the life course, we acquire new knowledge and learn social skills appropriate for that stage Early stages of life course are devoted to primary socialization and is followed by secondary socialization Stages of the Life Course Childhood o Romanticized as a time for playful innocence o Typically adults are protective of children and they shield them from being exposed to topics such as sex, death, alcohol and violence (parental guidance) o By the end of childhood, the elementary aspects of formal learning have been completed and most children have enough maturity and self-esteem to cope with the routines of family, peers and school o They also have developed cultural common sense: crossing the street safely, make purchases at the store, wash dishes etc, with limited adult supervision o This period is roughly between birth and adolescence (defined by ethnicity and class) Adolescence o A tempestuous period of life (identity crisis) o Adolescents are now recognized as physically mature but expected to limit or abstain from sexual activity, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes Youth o An emerging new stage

Period in which people are no longer adolescents but are not fully adults o Includes late teens and early twenties people who have not yet settled into a conventional adult role (job and family) o Ideal time to engage in recreational pursuits, travel, volunteer work, contemplation, college education Adulthood o Period between mid-twenties to mid-sixties o Time to put previous learning to practice: skills, talent and education o Early adulthood (until about 40) is period of assuming responsibility for own economic and social welfare: satisfy expectations associated with being a spouse, an employee, a parent and a responsible citizen o During middle age (about 40 to 60), careers peak and the physical charms of youth now become problematic; most adults view this period of life as very satisfying o At early adulthood people emphasize new relationships and egoistic accomplishment; by middle age, they begin emphasizing closeness and compassion in social relationships Old age o Withdrawal from long-held roles and socialization into new positions as retirees rather than worker, grandparent rather than parents, give advice rather than orders o Health takes on greater importance: new diets, medical insurance, new forms of recreation (walking vs running) o Gerontology, the study of aging and the elderly has become an important are of study in both social and medical field o A central question of this field is, What explains successful aging? o Disengagement theory: a theory of aging that emphasizes the importance of the elderly gradually disengaging from their roles in society (Cumming and Henry 1961) Assumes that withdrawal leads to satisfaction o Activity theory: a theory of aging that argues that the elderly should participate actively in society (Havighurst, Neugarten, and Tobin 1968; Maddox 1964) Argues that elders have essentially the same psychological and social needs as the middle aged and therefore elders benefit from maintaining a high level of activity in a wide range of roles o Continuity Theory: a theory of aging that states that successful aging is a matter of maintaining the same level of engagement experienced as an adult; both disengagement and activity theory assume that people change dramatically as they enter old age; continuity theory argues that people dont change much at all even if they age (personality, disposition, identity tend to remain regardless of age) o Death and dying (Kubler-Ross 1987;1968;Kubler-Ross and Kessler 2000) o Outlined the major emotional reactions of patients, family and sometimes even hospital staff as they deal with impending deaths o Five typical stages of dying

Denial and isolation (rejects the prospects of dying and isolates himself) Anger (sees the approaching of death as unfair) Bargaining (tries to avoid death by striking a bargain with God) Depression (when realizes that negotiation has failed) Acceptance (realizes that his or her life is ending; uses whatever time remains to prepare for death)

Agents of Socialization The individuals, groups, organizations and institutions that provide substantial amounts of socialization during the life course Family a. most important agent b. first development of physical and intellectual skills and social location c. Provide social context for learning values School a. Teach formal cognitive skills (reading, writing, math etc); informally reinforces values that are central to the society (learn to compete and cooperate) b. First introduction to a formal agent of socialization (as student who should meet objective standards, abide by standard rules and behave like anyone else) Peer group a. Provides a great deal of informal socialization Mass Media a. Refers to communications that are disseminated to large audiences without direct feedback or other interpersonal contacts between the senders and the receivers (radio, TV, newspapers, book) Socialization and the Self Sense of self: what we develop in our life course which is a perception of being a distinct personality with a unique identity Symbolic interactionists explain how the self develops The Looking Glass Self (Cooley 1902) A powerful metaphor that emphasized the importance of self The process through which we imaginatively assume the reactions of others 3 step sequence The image of your own appearance o how you appear to others: physical, personality, character, behavior The image of how others judge you o The way you imagine how people judge you (the image you see in the looking glass) Your response to the imagined reactions of others o If you like what you see in the looking glass, you may develop the side of your self even more; it bolsters your self-esteem

If you detect negative reactions, your self-esteem will be challenged and you may try to change

Role-Taking (Mead 1934) Assuming the role of another person and then judging oneself from the point of view of that person The process of socialization takes place over our lifetime and begins with childhood (Mead ibid) Children learn role-taking in play (bahay-bahayan: as parents, peers, and teachers, etc) and they eventually distinguish between specific roles and abstract roles As they play and have fun they are undergoing self-development such as learning values, norms, and behaviors associated with those roles and vicariously experiencing what it is like to have such role Over the course of a few years, children will take the role of hundreds of thousands of specific others Their ability will increase until they learn to take the role of an abstract entity such as peer group, school, community and eventually society as a whole Mead called this the role of the generalized other: a mark of full social development The ability to take the role of the generalized other develops over the course of childhood in 3 stages: Imitation o Up to about age 3, children do not have an independent identity and are not capable of taking any roles. Instead they imitate the behavior of other people without fully understanding what they are doing Play o From about 3 to about 6, children spend a good deal of time pretending to be someone else. That is, they play by taking the role of specific others Game o After age 6, the nature of play changes significantly. Children now play at activities requiring multiple roles and complex behaviors determined by what other children do. These features are typically found in games. In a game, rules must be followed, and roles must be coordinated. All players must therefore know their own roles as well as the roles of other players Mead recognizes the two aspects of the self: the I and Me I consists of the spontaneous self or the self as impulsive I is the relatively free actor ( I am sorry) Me is the deliberate aspect of the self or the self as social object (The professor flunked me) The me surfaces whenever an individual faces problems that require thoughtful responses whereas the I dominates whenever more spontaneous behavior is involved Most social life involves the Me aspect of the self (Charon 1998)

A symbolic interactionist approach to parenting (Charon 2003) 3 qualites that parents should encourage in their children: 1. The ability to solve problems. In solving problems children learn to think of themselves as social objects whose actions make a difference 2. The ability to communicate, understand others and role take. Understanding the behaviors of others will help children to adjust their behavior appropriately 3. Giving children a moral sense. Parents should encourage their children to recognize that one should be willing to be governed by the rules of society rather than be governed simply by what one wants to accomplish at a particular moment. The key to maintaining a consistent set of morals is to maintain interactions in a community of significant others that support this behavior. Moral Socialization All societies have value systems that specify what is good, right, and desirable behavior Socialization to the moral values of society Most prominent thinkers in moral socialization Name Sigmund Freud Summary of Theory Personality Theory The mind (psyche) has both conscious and unconscious elements Unconscious mind could influence a persons feelings and behavior, sometimes resulting in irrational behavior In well- adjusted person, the ego manages the opposing forces of the id and the superego Conflicts between the id and ego that are not resolved during childhood frequently surface as personality disorders many years later The ego is charged with the task of repressing inappropriate urges, pushing them back to the level of the unconscious The ability to repress inappropriate behavior is of fundamental importance to gaining social acceptance Key terms Id (It): represents the basic drives of the unconscious which are present at birth Ego (I): the part of the psyche that is conscious and in touch with reality; persons conscious effort to balance the drives of id with the demands of society Superego (Beyond the ego): the cultural values and norms internalized by an individual; our conscience that tell us why we must limit our demands Repression : Freuds term for the process of maintaining appropriate thoughts in the conscious mind 8 stages: Stage 1: First year of life (challenge of trust vs

Erik Erikson

Epigenetic principle States that humans develop through a biologically

predetermined unfolding of personality through 8 stages (biological clock) Views personality formation as lifelong process Helps us make sense of existing demands of socialization over the life course and how biological factors may intertwine with sociological and cultural factors in important ways

Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg

To understand the mental processes behind the ethical judgment of children, Piaget used moral dilemma- little stories that revolve around an ethically ambiguous situation. Piaget would relate a moral dilemma to a child and then would ask the child to discuss the behavior of each character. On the basis of these studies, Piaget concluded that morality develops in 2 stages.

mistrust) Stage 2: 2 & 3rd year (challenge of autonomy) Stage 3: 4 & 5th year (challenge of initiative) Am I good or bad? Stage 4: 6 to 11 (industriousness vs inferiority) Am I competent or worthless? Stage 5: 12 to 20 (identity vs confusion) Who am I and where am I going? Stage 6: 20 to 24 (intimacy vs isolation)Shall I share my life with another or live alone? Stage 7: 25 to 65 (generativity vs. selfabsorption) challenge to contribute to the lives of others versus becoming stagnant, trapped or totally self-absorbed Stage 8: 65 and older (the challenge of integrity vs despair) Have I lived a full life? Heteronomous stage (subject to the laws of other people): lasts up to 12; children simply accepts the rules laid down by adults; morality is reduced to following orders by adults and if they disobey those orders, to not getting caught Autonomic stage (beng subject to ones own laws); children learn that rules may be flexible; question parents rights to impose punishments Preconventional: People obey laws and social expectations to avoid punishment or to gain

Kohlberg expanded on Piagets ideas and applied them to older people and based on his studies concluded that morality develops over 3 main stages

extending from childhood through adulthood

Carol Gilligan

benefits Conventional: People incorporate societal rules and expectations into their own system Post conventional: highest level of moral development; People use broad ethical principles to guide behavior such as respect for human dignity and equality, and more recently, concern for the environment and animal rights (often are instigators of social change) Morality and Gender Gender differences in Argues that morality is generally socialization affect how boys and girls come to defined from a masculine interpret rules and viewpoint and assumed that the perform moral reasoning moral reasoning of women was As children, girls are inferior to that of men (1993) socialized to become Argues that women approach mothers and caretakers, morality from a different perspective: Whereas men define whereas boys are socialized t o become morality in terms of justice economic providers (logical application of preset rules, laws and regulations judged as right or wrong), women define it in terms of responsibility (an obligation to exercise care, to satisfy needs, and to avoid hurting peopleethical principles distinct from men)

Kohlbergs most widely known dilemmas (reported in Brown 1965) In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her . It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He

paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick womans husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about S1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, No, I discovered the drug and Im going to make money from it. So Heinz got desperate and broke into the mans store to steal the drug for his wife Question: Was Heinz right to steal the drug? Would you have done the same thing? Summary: Freud Erikson Viewed moral socialization in terms of the impulses of the id being monitored and controlled by the ego Developed a model based on Freuds ideas that involved the whole life course; Believed that moral socialization was a matter of overcoming different crises at 8 stages of development Viewed morality as interpretive skills that develop through socialization Emphasized the importance of gender; believes that women see morality in terms of social relationships, whereas men see it in terms of preset rules

Piaget and Kohlberg Gilligan

Resocialization and Total Institutions (Goffman, 1961) Total institution A setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society and controlled by an administrative staff Include prisons, slave plantations, monasteries, nursing homes, rehab centers, boarding schools The environment is highly standardized and nearly everybody shares a similar set of activities, eats the same food, and wears the same uniform The patients or inmates are required to follow schedules set by the administration and abide by rules that dictate how they perform their daily routines The purpose of such institutions is aimed at resocialization Resocialization A process that aims at reforming or altering an inmates personality through manipulation and control of the environment