3. Influence of the school institute on socialization

Like the family, schools have an explicit mandate to socialize people in the Ukraine – and especially children – into the norms and values of our culture.

Functionalists point out that, as agents of socialization, schools fulfil the function of teaching children the values and customs of the larger society. Conflict theorists concur with this observation but add that schools can reinforce the divisive aspects of society, especially those of social class. For example, higher education in the Ukraine is quite costly despite the existence of financial aid programs. Students from affluent backgrounds have an advantage in gaining access to universities and professional training. At the same time, less affluent young people may never receive the preparation that would qualify them for our society`s best-paying and most prestigious jobs [10, p. 311-324].

In other cultures as well, schools serve socialization functions. During the 1980s, for example, Japanese parents and educators were distressed to realize that children were gradually losing the knack of eating with chopsticks. This became a national issue in 1997 when school lunch programs introduced plastic sporks (combined fork and spoon, used frequently in the United States). National leaders, responding to the public outcry, banished sporks in favour of hashi (chopsticks). On a more serious note, Japanese schools have come under increasing pressure in recent years as working parents have abdicated more and more responsibility to educational institutions. To rectify the imbalance, the Japanese government in 1998 promoted a guide to better parenting, calling on parents to read more with their children, allow for more playtime, limit TV watching, and plan family activities, among other things [1, p. 431-442].

4. Family as an agent of socialization

The family is the most important agent of socialization in the Ukraine, especially for children. We’ll also give particular attention to five other agents of socialization: the school, the peer group, the mass media, the workplace, and the state.

We experience socialization first as babies and infants living in families; it is here that we develop an initial sense of self. Most parents seek to help their children become competent adolescents and self-sufficient adults, which means socializing them into the norms and values of both the family and the larger society. In this process, adults themselves experience socialization as they adjust to becoming spouses, parents, and in-laws [4, p. 165–199].

The lifelong process of learning begins shortly after birth. Since newborns can hear, see, smell, taste, and feel heat, cold, and pain, they are constantly orienting themselves to the surrounding world. Human beings, especially family members, constitute an important part of their social environment. People minister to the baby’s needs by feeding, cleansing, carrying, and comforting the baby.

Most infants go through a relatively formal period of socialization generally called habit training. Caregivers impose schedules for eating and sleeping for terminating breast or bottle feeding, and for introducing new foods. In these and other ways, infants can be viewed as objects of socialization. Yet they also function as socializers. Even as the behaviour of a baby is being modified by interactions with people and the environment, the baby is causing others to change their behaviour patterns. He or she converts adults into mothers and fathers, who, in turn, assist the baby in progressing into childhood [11, p. 779–790].

As both Charles Morton Cooley and George Herbert Mead noted, the development of the self is a critical aspect of the early years of ones life. In the United States, such social development includes exposure to cultural assumptions regarding gender and race.

Interactionists remind us that socialization concerning not only masculinity and femininity, but also marriage and parenthood, begins in childhood as a part of family life. Children observe their parents as they express affection, deal with finances, quarrel, complain about in-laws, and so forth. This represents an informal process of anticipatory socialization. The child develops a tentative model of what being married and being a parent are like.

Obviously, a major agent of socialization is the family. This is the first social institution and group that shapes individuals’ selves and personality. Because there is a great diversity of family structure and size, the impact of family on self-formation is not universal. Moreover, cultural standards of nurturing, display of affection and standards of discipline vary considerably worldwide. In western societies, research has shown that the number and order of children impact the self: first-borns tend to receive more discipline, to be higher achievers and to be more conformist. Children born last tend to be raised with more relaxed standards of discipline. As a result, they tend to be more sociable and more accepting of unconventional ideas and lifestyles.

From our families, we also inherit our position in the social structure. Families all belong to some social class, racial and ethnic group. This initial social positioning is central to our self-formation but also to our life-chances. According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, from our families, we inherit our habitus, that is, the set of dispositions that mark us as part of our social class: manners, speech patterns, vocabulary and articulation styles, bodily behavior and postures. Our habitus defines the type of social interactions in which we feel comfortable.

Our families also transmit to us different forms of capital (resources): economic capital (money), cultural capital (parents’ education level), and social capital (network of social connections to which our family has access). In this sense, there is never equality at birth. From the moment we are born, our life-chances are affected by our family’s position in the social structure.

Working from a more microsociological perspective but using Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital, Annette Lareau (2003) has researched the (powerful yet largely invisible) impact of social class on child-rearing practices and discovered that middle-class and working-class parents tend to follow two different approaches to child-rearing. Middle-class parents tend to practice concerted cultivation whereas working-class parent tend to practice accomplishment of natural growth. Concerted cultivation refers to the child-rearing approach where parents are heavily involved in their children’s education and in their extra-curricular activities.