Primary socialization is the first stage of social learning in childhood, through which individuals become members of society. It is crucial for developing the self, identity, and a basic understanding of reality.
During primary socialization, children learn the fundamental values, norms, and behaviors expected by their society.
This process mainly occurs through close, personal, face-to-face relationships, typically with parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members.
The family provides children with a sense of morality, teaching them right from wrong and how to relate to others.
As children grow, primary attachments expand to include friends and other adults encountered through school, work, or family networks.
Key Characteristics
Primary socialization is the initial, comprehensive process through which an individual, typically a child, is integrated into society and acquires the foundations of human characteristics, culture, and identity.
Primary Relationships
Primary socialization occurs specifically within primary relationships.
A primary relationship is characterized as one in which the individual has a close, personal, intimate, and face-to-face connection with the people responsible for the socialization process.
These intimate relationships are contrasted with the impersonal nature of secondary relationships.
Emotional Charge (Affectivity)
This process takes place under circumstances that are highly charged emotionally.
Internalization (the process of acquiring social reality) only occurs as identification occurs, suggesting that without emotional attachment to the significant others, the learning would be difficult, if not impossible.
Lack of Choice
In primary socialization, the child is presented by society with a predefined set of significant others and has no choice in their selection.
Identification with these figures is quasi-automatic, and the internalization of their reality is quasi-inevitable.
Foundation of Reality
The world internalized during primary socialization becomes the base-world or the home world, which is much more firmly entrenched in consciousness than realities internalized later.
Institutions and social formations appear as given, unalterable, and self-evident, similar to natural phenomena, because the child had no part in shaping them.
Lifelong Impact
Many of the fundamental principles learned through primary socialization usually stay with the individual for life.
These core principles allow the individual to apply learned behaviors to new and different situations.
Agent of Primary Socialization: The Family
The individuals, groups, or institutions that transmit what we need to know to participate in society are called agents of socialization.
A primary relationship is characterized by being close, personal, intimate, and face-to-face.
The family is the best example of a primary group.
Across all societies, the family is considered the most important agent of primary socialization, providing emotionally rich guidance when the child is fully dependent.
These significant others have the strongest influence on the child’s self-concept, shaping both their social understanding and sense of identity.
Foundation of Reality
This early teaching is absorbed as absolute truth, forming the foundation of the child’s social and psychological development.
Because the child has no choice in their significant others, the internalization of the reality mediated by their parents is quasi-inevitable.
The world internalized during primary socialization is perceived by the child as the world, the only existent and only conceivable world, and is therefore much more firmly entrenched in consciousness than realities learned later (secondary socialization).
This “first dawn of reality” provides a sense of certainty that adheres to the world of childhood, which often remains the “home world” for life.
Transmitting Culture, Skills, and Identity
The family sets the fundamental patterns for behavior, personality, and social status that influence the individual for the rest of their life.
- Physical and Cognitive Skills: The family teaches fundamental skills necessary for societal participation, such as how to walk, talk, and use various tools like knives and forks.
Language internalization, crucial to socialization, happens concurrently with the subjective crystallization of society, identity, and reality. - Moral and Social Norms: Parents use their values to teach the child the difference between right and wrong behaviour. They teach children how to relate appropriately to others (family, friends, strangers, etc.).
- Self-Concept and Personality: Socialization begins in the family, which helps children acquire a human personality and social characteristics. Symbolic interactionists emphasize that family support and guidance are crucial to a child’s developing self-concept during infancy and early childhood.
- Conforming to Social Rhythms: The child learns to subjugate biological resistance to social moulding, such as resisting eating and sleeping solely by biologically given demands and instead conforming to the temporal structure of society (e.g., eating and sleeping by the clock
Socializing Inequality and Status
The family is the primary site where individuals acquire their fixed place in the social hierarchy.
- Ascribed Status: From birth, an individual is assigned a specific social position (their ascribed status), including their social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and regional subcultural grouping.
This social identity acquired from parents significantly affects their subsequent life chances. - Class-Based Socialization: Parents tend to pass their social position onto their children, inheriting not only social standing but also the cultural norms and values associated with that lifestyle.
For instance, poor families often emphasize obedience and conformity, behaviors helpful for repetitive-task jobs, while wealthy families emphasize judgment and creativity, beneficial for managerial or problem-solving careers, thereby reproducing the class system. - Gender Roles: The family is a primary agent of gender socialization, teaching what it means to be masculine or feminine in that society. This process begins almost from the moment of birth.
Parents socialize sons and daughters differently through actions such as buying color-coded and gender-typed clothes, playing more roughly with boys, talking more lovingly to girls, and assigning different chores and privileges (e.g., granting boys more autonomy at an earlier age).
The Functional Imperative of the Family (Functionalism)
Functionalist theory views the family as a social institution that is essential for social stability.
Talcott Parsons asserted that the primary socialization of children is one of the two basic and irreducible functions the family retains in modern industrial society.
Maintaining Society and Value Consensus
The family’s primary socialization role ensures the continuity and stability of the entire social structure:
- Molding Citizens (The “Personality Factory”): Parsons viewed the nuclear family as a ‘personality factory’ whose products are young workers and citizens committed to the rules and belief systems necessary for positive involvement in economic life and good citizenship.
- Transmitting Core Values: The family bears the main responsibility for socializing children into the core cultural values required by industrial-capitalist societies, such as achievement, competition, equality of opportunity, and respect for private property. This is key to achieving value consensus, conformity, and social solidarity—the foundation stones of social order.
- The Social Bridge: The family is seen as functioning as a crucial bridge or transmission between the individual child and the wider society. Sociologists note that work needs people who are socialized into society’s values and norms, and the family exists for the purpose of fulfilling that need.
Education, which performs secondary socialization, explicitly acts as a social bridge between the particularistic standards of the family (which loves its members regardless of talent) and the universalistic standards of wider society (where people are judged on merit).
Frequently Asked Questions
Is school primary or secondary socialization?
In most cases, school is an instance of secondary socialization. This is because children have already been socialized by their families and peer groups before they start school. However, there are some ways in which school can be considered primary socialization.
For example, if a child came from an absent family, or was put in a school or daycare when they were an infant or toddler, a school-like institution may influence primary socialization (Whitbeck, 1999).
Can primary socialization be provided by anyone other than the family?
While primary socialization is most notably carried out by family members, there is an array of other potential primary socializers. These include babysitters, nannies, daycare providers, and even older siblings.
In some cases, the media may also serve as a primary socializer, especially if children are exposed to television or other screens at a very young age.
Ultimately, any individual or institution that plays a significant role in shaping a child”s early experiences could be considered a primary socializer (Whitbeck, 1999).
What’s the difference between primary and secondary socialization?
Primary socialization refers to the ways in which children learn about their culture and become acclimated to society. It is mainly influenced by the family and takes place in the home.
Secondary socialization occurs later in life and is shaped by one”s peer groups, teachers, bosses, and other forces outside of the family. It helps individuals refine the skills they learned during primary socialization and adapt to new environments and roles.
What do functionalists think about socialization?
Social structural functionalists, such as Talcott Parsons, view socialization as a process where the values and norms of society are agreed upon by all members of society because people in societies have a social contract which protects people from one another and keeps society stable and balanced.
Without primary socialization, people would not know how to behave appropriately, and there would be chaos.
Functionalists argue that the family is the most important institution for primary socialization, as it is here that children learn the basic values and norms of society.
The family provides love, security, and stability, essential for healthy development (Bales & Parsons, 2014).
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