Primary Socialisation

• Family as an agency of socialization

  • Teaches children the norms and values specific to their family (particularistic values) and to wider society
  • Through the family, we learn to communicate with others, aspects of our culture, and the norms and values of wider society
  • Rewards for positive behaviors such as praise or sharing, sanctions for negative behaviors like being told off for behaving badly
• Functionalist view of primary socialization

  • Primary socialization is a universal function of the family across different cultures
  • Primary socialization is one of the basic and irreducible functions of the family according to Parsons
  • Family helps with the process of being socialized into a value consensus which benefits individuals and wider society
  • Socialization into particularistic values of the family unit is a stepping stone to socialization into wider society through other agencies as part of secondary socialization
  • Emphasis on gender socialization, males and females suited to certain roles based on biology, instrumental role of the male as provider, expressive role of the female as caring and nurturing
  • Children need to be socialized into their gender roles by the same-sex parent, nuclear family is believed to be the best form of family
• Primary socialization

  1. Role of the family in conducting primary socialization

  2. Different theoretical views of primary socialization

  3. Evaluation of the effectiveness of primary socialization
• Marxist view of primary socialization

  • Family acts as an ideological state apparatus passing on the norms and values of the ruling class
  • Elder members socialize younger ones into norms of obedience, conformity, and knowing their place in society
  • Socialization into becoming a unit of consumption rather than production
  • Families must provide for their own members, work for the ruling classes to afford goods, workers are socialized not to reject changes to their employment
  • Creation of false needs, children susceptible to advertising
• Children are particularly susceptible to advertising and utilize their pester power to ask parents for new toys, clothes, and gadgets
• Family creates false needs according to some Marxists
• Not rejecting changes to their employment

  Strikes and industrial action may threaten their jobs which is required to provide for their families
• Feminists take a critical view of the role of the family in socialization


  They believe that children are socialized into gender-appropriate roles that reinforce the patriarchal nature
• Gender roles are present in the next generation

  Girls are expected to look after their man by taking on domestic labor in the household, impacting power relationships within the family with males more likely to be the head of the household
• Boys are socialized into being active and encouraged, while girls are socialized into being passive and submissive


  This is in part due to the same-sex socialization of mothers and fathers, with boys learning from their fathers and girls copying their mothers, leading to a reproduction of gender roles
• Critics suggest there have been many changes to gender roles in recent years
• Families perform a form of commodity fetishism, a desire to consume particularly in competing with neighbors, all of which serves the needs of capitalism
• In failing to adequately socialize children into the valued consensus society, some parents have contributed to the emergence of an underclass in society


  Lone parents are more likely to be targeted as being unable to provide adequate socialization
• The New Right's ideas of primary socialization are similar to those offered by functionalists


  They believe families should socialize their children into a valued consensus based on traditional Christian values
• The New Right suggests that lone parents are to blame for not adequately socializing their sons into values such as personal responsibility and hard work


  This leads to a generation of welfare-dependent males not contributing towards society
• A lone parent can perform adequate socialization and the problems of welfare dependency are based on the lack of opportunities for those from lower social classes
• The impact of primary socialization depends on the theoretical view that sociologists subscribe to

  Functionalism suggests primary socialization is right for society, while conflict theories such as Marxism and feminism are critical of the way socialization serves the powerful by controlling the powerless
• Some structural explanations do not account for the changes in socialization in society today with multiple sources of socialization
• What children are taught by their parents does not always become their core values and can be replaced by secondary agencies of socialization
• In society today, there are more diverse ranges of influences on the personal lives of individuals