fun to eat and how to be more attractive, more appealing, smarter, and a better person through the consumption of products. This bombardment is a particularly influential part of socialization for children and teenagers.
Lessons from one agent of socialization generally complement those from other agents. Parents work at home to support what school and religion teach. However, at times, agents provide conflicting lessons. For example, family and faith communities often give teens messages that conflict with those of peer groups regarding sexual activity and drug use. This is an example of mixed messages given by formal and informal agents.
Thinking Sociologically
What confusion might be created for children when the formal and informal agents of socialization provide different messages about values or acceptable behaviors? Is this contradiction something that parents should be concerned about? Why or why not?
Micro-Level Socialization
Perhaps the most important micro-level formal agent of socialization is our own family—parents, siblings, and other family members. One way in which families teach children what is right and wrong is through rewards and punishments, called sanctions. Children who lie to their parents may receive a verbal reprimand or a slap on the hand, be sent to their rooms, have a “time out,” or receive a spanking, depending on differences in child-rearing practices among families. These are examples of negative sanctions. Conversely, children may be rewarded for good behavior with a positive sanction, such as a smile, praise, a cookie, or a special event. The number and types of sanctions dispensed in the family shape the socialization process, including development of the self and the perceptions we have of who we are and even whether we are good and clever or bad and stupid. Note that family influence varies from one culture to another.
In Japan, the mother is a key agent in the process of turning a newborn into a member of the group, passing on the strong group standards and expectations of family, neighbors, community, and society through the use of language and emotion. The child learns the importance of depending on the group and therefore fears being cast out. The need to belong creates pressure to conform to expectations, and the use of threats and the fear of shame help socialize children into Japanese ways (Brinkerhoff et al. 2014; Hendry 1987). The social class of the mother and gender of the child affects the socialization experience provided by the mother; for example, many women see their daughters as caregivers of the family in the future, thus influencing the daughters’ type of education and educational attainment (Yamamoto 2015).
Nonconformity is a source of shame in Japan. The resulting ridicule is a powerful means of social control. In some cases, the outcast is physically punished by peers. Thus, to bring shame on oneself or the family is behavior to be avoided. In the most extreme cases, young people have committed suicide because they did not conform to group expectations or succeed in school or a job and felt profoundly ashamed as a result.
▲ A Japanese mother helps her son at Heian Shinto Shrine during Shichi-go-san Matsuri, also called the Seven-Five-Three Festival, a celebration with prayers of long life for children aged 3 to 7.
© Getty Images/Tibor Bognar/Corbis Documentary
Thinking Sociologically
How did agents of socialization influence who you are today, and how did your experience differ from that of the Japanese children just described?
In contrast to the values of conformity and fitting into the group espoused in many Asian countries, in the United States most parents teach their children to value friendliness, cooperation, orientation toward achievement, social competence, responsibility, and independence. However, subcultural values and socialization practices may differ within the diverse groups in the U.S. population. Conceptions of what makes a “good person” or a “good citizen” and varied goals of socialization bring about differences in the process of socialization around the world.
Meso-Level Socialization
Meso-level agents also work to socialize people into specific cultural values and roles they must learn to fulfill. Education and religion are two obvious influences—both being institutions with primary responsibility for socialization. We discuss those in more detail in Chapters 11 and 12; here we illustrate meso-level socialization influences with a focus on social class and the media.
Social Class.
Our education level, our occupation, the house we live in, what we choose to do in our leisure time, the foods we eat, and our religious and political beliefs are just a few aspects of our lives affected by socialization. Applying what we know from sociological research, the evidence strongly suggests that socialization varies by social class (as seen in the example about Japanese children earlier) (Yamamoto 2015).Social class refers to the wealth, power, and prestige rankings that individuals hold in society (Paxton and Pearce 2009). Meso-level patterns of distribution of resources, based, in part, on the economic opportunities created by state and national policies, affect who we become.
Upper-middle-class and middle-class parents in the United States usually have above-average education and managerial or professional jobs. They tend to pass on to their children the skills and values necessary to succeed in the subculture of their social class. Subcultures, you will recall, operate at the meso level of the social system. Subcultural values such as autonomy, creativity, self-direction (the ability to make decisions and take initiative), responsibility, curiosity, and consideration of others are especially important for middle-class success and are part of middle-class subculture (Kohn 1989). If the child misbehaves, for example, middle-class parents typically analyze the child’s reasons for misbehaving, and punishment is related to these reasons. Sanctions often involve instilling guilt and denying privileges.
Working-class parents tend to pass on to children their cultural values of respect for authority and conformity to rules, lessons that will be useful if the children also have blue-collar jobs (Kohn 1989). Immediate punishment with no questions asked if a rule is violated functions to prepare children for positions in which obedience to rules is important to success. Children are expected to be neat, clean, well-mannered, honest, and obedient students and workers (MacLeod 2008). Socialization experiences for boys and girls are also often different, following traditional gender-role expectations of the working-class subculture.
▲ This parent passes on a love for the piano to his young son. Because of the social class of this father, his son is likely to receive many messages about creativity, curiosity, and self-direction.
© Getty/Jeff Randall
Members of each class, as you can see, socialize their children to be successful in their social class and to meet expectations for adults of that class. Schools, like families, participate in this process and socialize children to adapt to the settings in which they grow up and are likely to live. Children’s social class position on entering school, in turn, affects the socialization experiences they have in school (Ballantine, Hammack, and Stuber 2017). The result is the reproduction of class, as young people are socialized into the social class of their parents.
Social
