Stages Of Socialization

Introduction

There are numerous learning situations of immense sociological significance that can be observed during daily activities through participant observation. The specific learning situations observed during the assigned week include a person watching television and a parent teaching a child at home. In this particular essay, these learning situations are described in details, along with the culture components that were being learned and taught. The essay also covers the agents and stages of socialization, together with the way in which the observed incidents support the socialization theories developed by renowned sociologists.

First Situation: Person Watching Television

In this learning situation, a 20 year old woman watching several

Specifically, the mass media in this case is the television, since the teenage woman interacted with the TV through watching the show. Through this socialization agent, the observed viewer is exposed to events that arouse strong emotions, despite the entire show being total romanticism. For this cause, the television serves as a premise that broadcasts programs that present constantly altered social reality. Shrum (1998) attests to, and adds that mass media as an agent of socialization seems to be a tool for reinforcing gender typecasts and other forms of stereotypes. The stage of socialization pertinent to this observation situation is the secondary socialization. This is where the teenage woman advances the socialization process beyond the family environment, and where the influence of the peers becomes significant (Tischler, 2013). The incident in this observation advocates the theory of personality formulated by Erik Erikson. According to McLeod (2008), Erikson’s theory asserts that the psychosocial development of an individual takes place in eight distinct psychosocial phases or stages. Based on this theory, the woman observed is in the first development stage in adults, which is the sixth stage in Erikson’s theory. Specifically, it is the intimacy vs. isolation stage of psychosocial development that happens between 18 and 40 years of age.

The two entities in this situation constitute a partially complete family unit, which serves as the most crucial agent of childhood socialization according to Henslin (2010). School as an agent of socialization is indirectly represented in this situation by the element of knowledge and skill transfer from an adult (father) to a child (daughter). Two stages of socialization are identified in this case, and these include primary and adult socialization stages. While the father is in the adult socialization stage characterized by entering into and performing duties and responsibility, the child is in the primary socialization stage characterized by inquisitiveness to learn cognitive skills and language, together with norm and value internalization (McLeod, 2008). The incidents in this situation support Piaget theory, which is a cognitive development theory, formulated by Jean Piaget. It states that cognitive development in children is the development in mental states that occurs in sequential stages through discoveries, information integration insightful critical thinking and interaction (Cherry,