Socialization is an intricate process where people learn how to interact with their surroundings. Almost everything that people do around that is considered to be human nature is out of socialization. During the process of socialization people learn how to talk, walk, feed, and how to relate with others. Socialization is a continuous process, but it majorly takes place during childhood. This article will explain on how aspects of socialization such as family, friends, school and religion impacts on a person.
Family
The family is considered as the most important agent of socialization amongst all the agents of socialization. Infants are solely dependent on their immediate adults for survival. Parents are held accountable to ensure that infants function properly and care for themselves. Parents together with other close relations such as brothers and sisters, teach us how to exist as a group, care for ourselves and about close relationships. Also, the family provides us with norms, initial system of values, and beliefs. For example, girls and boys acquire skills on how to be mothers and fathers by watching how the parents carry out themselves. Family relations have the ability to break or build an individual’s poise. Young children that are encouraged and allowed take up their interests will usually possess a greater self-esteem and individuality. Conversely, a household that is always critical of a child’s presentation may lead to the child having a low self-esteem in the future.
After family, school is the next essential agent of socialization. The main purpose of school is to teach life skills and transfer knowledge, such as meeting deadlines and following directions. Schools enable socialization in various ways. First, students acquire formal curriculum in the form of writing, reading, and arithmetic. This socialization enables students to become productive in the society. Secondly, as students interact with school day by day with their peers, they gain strength in their social interaction skills. Third, the interaction with the authority figures enables them to learn to respect leaders and people in charge other than their parents. On the free curriculum, school enables students to learn about the cultures in the society. It teaches them the presence of different cultures and the students get to respect people who are not of their culture. Furthermore, the students learn first positive things such as, patience, obedience, neatness, and competing for good grades. In this manner, students acquire traits that prepare them for careers and jobs which will help them in future.
Religion
Religion can be referred to as an assortment of belief systems, cultural systems, and world views which connect humanity to moral values and spirituality. In as much as religion is perhaps less important in our lives currently compared to a few generations ago, it continues to influence our behaviors, values, and beliefs. All aspects of religion affect our belief and values on both nonreligious, and religious matters alike, though the particular are different from one issue to the other. Religion is not only about accommodating a particular set of beliefs, but it is how we live our lives. Religion controls different aspects of our lives, such as; how we spend money, through donations, church offerings, missions, and even charities to the poor and homeless. It also controls how we respond to life challenges, difficulties, our honesty, and even how we care about each other.
Friends
Friends are considered to be people with the same interest, age, and with the same social position. Indifferent from family and schools, friends always spend time in the absence of adult supervision. Friendship primarily teaches people how to develop and maintain relationships by themselves. Friendships also give people the chance to share and discuss issues that children cannot share with the parents or the parents cannot share with the children. In our fast growing society, peer groups greatly influence an individual’s lifestyle; friends affect our self-confidence- friends with changing the perception of each other for example, if one person in the friendship circle thinks that another is arrogant he or she will influence the friends to think the same. Friends also influence each other’s emotions- when a friend is feeling sad, anxious, happy or depressed, it may influence the other friends to feel the same as well due to the closeness and the friendship shared. Irrefutably, friends spend a lot of time with each other than they do with anybody else, this will lead to group think and friendship subculture.
Conclusion
Various things can affect a person’s socialization process. The level of impact of impact that every agent of socialization will have will depend on the person’s experiences, situation and the phase of life that the person is in. In summary, the family will influence, relationships, initial social interactions, role models, behavior, and language acquisition. The school will affect, values, grammar, rules, and social settings. Religion will affect a person’s guideline on living, the meaning of life, values, and love or others. And finally, friends will influence a person’s activity, trends, behaviors, and emotions.
