you scratch at the door like you want to go out.” They will talk about their little skit for 15 minutes and then enact it, with the actual enactment taking perhaps 1 minute. Small children mimic or imitate role-taking based on what they have seen as they learn and practice future roles (Handel, Cahill, and Elkin 2007).
Society and its rules are initially represented by significant others—parents, guardians, relatives, siblings, or important individuals whose primary and sustained interactions are especially influential for the individual. That is why much of the play stage involves role-taking based on these significant people in the child’s life. The child does not yet understand the complex relations and multiple role players in the social world outside the immediate family. Children may have a sense of how their mommy or daddy sees them, but children are not yet able to comprehend how they are seen by the larger social world. Lack of role-taking ability is apparent when children say inappropriate things, such as, “Why are you so fat?”
The third stage in the process of developing a social self, the game stage, is when a child develops the ability to take the roles of multiple others concurrently and to conform to societal expectations. The child goes beyond the significant other, such as a parent, to value the opinion of all peers or the expectations of the community.
Have you ever watched a team of young children play T-ball (a pre–Little League baseball game in which the children hit the ball from an upright rubber device that holds the ball) or observed a soccer league made up of 6-year-olds? If so, you have seen Mead’s point illustrated vividly. In soccer (or football), 5- or 6-year-old children will not play their positions despite constant urging and cajoling by coaches. They all run after the ball, with little sense of their interdependent positions. Likewise, a child in a game of T-ball may pick up a ball that has been hit, turn to the coach, and say, “Now what do I do with it?” Most still do not quite grasp throwing it to first base, and the first-base player may actually have left the base to run for the ball. It can be hilarious for everyone except the coach when a hit that goes 7 feet turns into a home run because everyone is scrambling for the ball.
Prior to the game stage, the vision of the whole process is not possible. When children enter the game stage at about age 7 or 8, they are developmentally able to play the roles of various positions and enjoy a complex game. Each child learns what is expected and the interdependence of roles because she or he is able, at this stage, to respond to the expectations of several people simultaneously (Hewitt and Shulman 2011; Meltzer 1978). This allows the individual to coordinate his or her activity with others.
In moving from the play stage to the game stage, children’s worlds expand from family and day care to neighborhood playmates, school, and other organizations. This process gradually builds up a composite of societal expectations that the child learns from family, peers, and other organizations, what Mead refers to as the generalized other. The child learns to internalize the expectations of society—the generalized other—over and above the expectations of any significant others. Behavior comes to be governed by abstract rules (“no running outside of the baseline” or “no touching the soccer ball with your hands unless you are the goalie”) rather than guidance from and emotional ties to a significant other. Children become capable of moving into new social situations such as school, organized sports, and (eventually) the workplace to function with others in both routine and novel interactions.
▲ Very young children who play soccer do not understand the role requirements of games. They all—including the goalie—want to chase after the ball. Learning to play positions and understand the roles in a complex situation is a critical step in the future socialization of the young child.
© iStock.com/wind-moon
The common human experience of feeling embarrassed illustrates how the generalized other becomes internalized into one’s conception of self. Making an inappropriate remark at a party or having another call undue attention to one’s appearance can cause embarrassment. Feeling embarrassed may occur when one violates a social norm and then thinks about how others view that behavior. According to this role-taking view, we see ourselves as objects from the standpoint of others, and we judge ourselves accordingly. Very young children, however, do not feel embarrassment when they do things such as soil their pants or make inappropriate comments because they have not incorporated the generalized other. They have not yet learned the perspective of others.
The capacity to feel embarrassed is not only an indicator of having internalized the generalized other but also a uniquely human outcome of our role-taking ability (Hewitt and Schulman 2011; Koschate-Reis 2009). Some children face challenges to their self from teasing and bullying that result in fear, shame, embarrassment, and guilt. These feelings affect the bullied child’s sense of self and can influence the self into adulthood.
As children grow, they identify with new in-groups, such as a neighborhood, a college sorority, or the military. We learn new ideas and expand our understanding. Some individuals ultimately come to think of themselves as part of the global human community. Thus, for many individuals, the social world expands through socialization. However, some individuals never develop this expanded worldview, remaining narrowly confined and drawing lines between themselves and others who are different. Such narrow boundaries often result in prejudice against others.
Thinking Sociologically
Who are you? Write down 15 to 20 roles or attributes that describe who you are. How many of these items are characteristics associated with the Me—nouns such as son, mother, student, and employee? Which of the items are traits or attributes—adjectives such as shy, sensitive, lonely, selfish, and daring? How do you think each of these was learned or incorporated into your conception of your self?
Socialization Throughout the Life Cycle
In all societies, individuals move from one stage to the next in the socialization process. Socialization is a lifelong process with many small and large passages. Infants begin the socialization process at birth. In childhood, one rite of passage is a child’s first day at school—entrance into the meso-level institution of education. This turning point marks a child’s entry into the larger world. The standards of performance are now defined by the child’s teachers, peers, friends, and others outside the home.
Adolescence is an important stage in Western industrial and postindustrial societies, but this stage is far from universal. Indeed, it is largely an invention of complex industrial societies over the past 2 centuries, characterized by extensive periods of formal education and dependency on parents (Papalia, Martorell, and Feldman 2014). Adolescence is, in a sense, a structurally produced mass identity crisis because Western societies lack clear rites of passage for adolescents. Teens come to view themselves as a separate and distinct group with their own culture, slang vocabulary, clothing styles, and opinions about appropriate sexual behavior and forms of recreation. Some social scientists today argue that adolescence is continuing into the mid-20s as young people struggle to enter adulthood, remaining economically and socially semidependent (Roberts 2018; Stetka 2017).
Much of our adult years are spent in work and home life, including marriage and parenting roles for many. It is not surprising, then, that graduation from one’s final alma mater (whether it be high school, college, or graduate school) and acceptance of one’s first full-time job serve as rites of passage into adulthood in modern societies.
Most social scientists emphasize the importance of rites of passage—celebrations or public recognitions when individuals shift from one status to another—naming ceremonies, school graduations,
