Agents of Socialization and Family Dynamics in Society

Agents of Socialization

• Family: Represents the first emotional tie and has the greatest impact on the socialization process. It may be problematic as it can reproduce negative models.
• Schools: Introduce a new social world, emphasizing gender and race. They provide information for individuals to understand themselves and others, impart skills to function as citizens and workers, and expose them to inequality. Schools offer the first experience of economics and social status.
• Peers: Allow individuals to learn how to form relationships without adult supervision. They may encourage both positive and negative interests and can influence changes in behavior and personality to gain acceptance.
• Mass Media: Influences people's behavior through modeling and imitation. It can control what is deemed important in society by selecting particular topics and subtly manipulating the audience.

Family: The Major Social Institution

The family is the most important socializing agent because it transmits culture and maintains social control. It exists in every culture worldwide. A social unit is created by two or more people related by blood, marriage, or adoption, who share economic property, sexual access among the adults, and a sense of commitment among members.

Functions of the Family

• Primary functions: Stable satisfaction of sexual needs, procreation and rearing of children, provision of a home, and socialization.
• Secondary functions: Economic, educational, religious, health, recreational, and cultural.

Types of Families

• Family of orientation: Consists of parents and siblings, where an individual is born.
• Family of procreation: Involves the transmission of values, beliefs, and attitudes to one's own children and partner.

Families can be extended, where two or more adult generations share tasks and living quarters (common in agricultural societies), or nuclear, consisting of two parents and their children (practical for urban areas).

Historical Changes in the Family

• Family before the Industrial Revolution:
  • The family was a "production unit," with home and community being the places where everything a family needed was produced.
  • Men worked the fields, and women did the housework.
  • Extended families often included many relatives and maidservants.
  • Children started to work at 6-8 years old.
  • Permission was required to get married.
  • Social and economic interests ruled personal relationships, with marriages arranged according to economic interests.
  • Illegitimate children and infant mortality were common due to a lack of hygiene and infectious diseases.
• Family after Industrialization and Urbanization:
  • Created a distinct change in roles, with wives and children becoming dependent on husbands.
  • Family members became consumers.
  • Improved technology brought medical advances, new knowledge to be passed on in schools, recreation according to age groups, and improved transportation.
  • The economic function shifted to factories, stores, and offices.
• Family Characteristics Nowadays:
  • Influenced by the economic structure (crisis, difficulties finding a job, cost of living).
  • The traditional family has been transformed, with an increase in single-parent families, women working, young people leaving their homes later, later formation of families, a decrease in the number of children, more permissiveness, and less authoritarianism.

What is Marriage?

Marriage is the state of being united to a person as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law.

Functions of Marriage

• Public recognition of the relationship
• Stable sexual satisfaction
• Work division
• Rights transmission

Alternatives to Marriage

• Cohabitation: Two or more people living together in the same dwelling.
• LAT (Living Apart Together): Families who live together but not all the time, for example, those who live together on weekends but not during the rest of the week.
• PSSLT (Persons of the Same Sex Living Together)
• POSLT (Persons of the Opposite Sex Living Together)

Family in Europe

• High percentage of working women
• Very high divorce rates
• Single-parent homes
• "New members" in the family