Agents of Socialization

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Agents of Socialization Gender
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Family

•  First emotional tie
• Greatest impact on socialization process
• First place to learn language, norms, and values
  of the culture
• May be problematic
• Parents/Guardians may reproduce negative modeling
  that they experienced as a child

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School

• Opens the door to a new social world
• Provides importance that society places on gender
  and race
• Provides information to individuals understand
  themselves and others
• Provides skills to function as a citizen and a
  worker
• Exposure to inequality
• First experience of economics and social status
• Reduces opportunities for control and makes
  children feel less competent

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Peers

• Influential from late childhood through
  adolescence and early adulthood
• Learn how to form relationships without adult
  supervision
• May encourage good and bad interests
• May guide short term choices
• Change behavior and personality to be accepted by
  peers

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Media

• Represents impersonal communication directed at a
  certain audience
• Major type of secondary socialization
• Influences peoples behavior through modeling and
  imitation
• The mass media can create and influence/control
  perceptions of what is important in society by
  selecting and stressing particular topics, views,
  interpretations, and themes
• Advertising secretly manipulates the audience

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Gender Socialization

• Gender is considered a social construction. 
  Gender socialization begins at birth once an
  infants sex becomes known.  From birth, infants
  learn attitudes, thoughts, and behavior patterns
  that have been established by society based on an
  individuals sex.

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Traditional Ideals of Masculinity and Femininity
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Masculinity

• Toughness
• Reason
• Action
• Access to weaponry

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Femininity

• Softness
• Emotional
• Passive

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Time brings about Change

• Most members of society no longer see
  themselves in the traditional image of male or
  female.  In todays society, there are more
  females getting involved with hyper-masculine
  activities.  Men and women now share more duties
  that were traditionally held by one sex or
  another in the past.

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Is the Media Helping or Hurting this Process??