4.1 Summarize the nature versus nurture debate and the sociological perspective on it.

4.2 Predict the impact of isolation and neglect on children.

4.3 Defend the position that groups at each level in our social world have a stake in how we are socialized.

4.4 Describe how we develop a “self” through interacting with others.

4.5 Explain how micro- and mesolevel agents of socialization influence individuals.

4.6 Discuss how macrolevel agents of socialization can affect children today.

4.7 Identify policy questions that rely on an understanding of socialization.

Key Points:

• Human beings come with their own biological makeup, but most of what makes us uniquely human we learn from our culture and society—through socialization. Humans who live in isolation from others do not receive the social­ization necessary to be part of culture and are sometimes barely human.
• The self consists of the interaction of the I—the basic impulsive human with drives, needs, and feelings—and the Me. We develop a reflective self through role-taking to see how others might view us.
• The self is profoundly shaped by others, but it also has agency—that is, it can be an initiator of action and a maker of meaning.
• The self develops through stages, from mimicking oth­ers (the play stage) to more intellectually sophisticated abilities to role-take and to see how various roles com­plement each other (the game stage).
• The self is modified as it moves through life stages, and some of those stages require major resocialization— shedding old roles and taking on new ones as one enters new statuses in life.
• A number of agents of socialization are at work in each of our lives, communicating messages relevant at the micro, meso, or macro level of social life. At the meso level, for example, we may receive different messages about what it means to be a “good” person depending on our ethnic, religious, or social-class subculture.
• Some of these messages may be in conflict with each other, as when global messages about tolerance for those who are different conflict with a nation’s desire to have absolute loyalty and a sense of superiority.

Summary:

Human socialization is pervasive, extensive, and lifelong. We cannot understand what it means to be human without comprehending the impact of a specific culture on us, the influence of our close associates, and the complex inter­play of pressures at the micro, meso, and macro levels. Indeed, without social interaction, there would not even be a self. We humans are, in our most essential natures, social beings. The purpose of this chapter has been to open our eyes to the ways in which we become the individuals we are.