Family vs. School: Socialization and Personal Identity Formation

What Is Socialization?

Sociologists define socialization as "the process by which, through contact with other human beings, one becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable human being, skilled in the ways of a given culture and environment" (Giddens, Duneier, & Appelbaum). There are many ways in which socialization occurs. Interaction with parents, family members, neighbors, community members, teachers, fellow students, and religious leaders all contribute to the process. Other contributors may include cultural influences such as television and other media, a child's native language, religious mores, and various racial, ethnic, or gender messages that arrive from multiple sources. While psychologists often focus on the influence of early life experiences — such as the relationship between mother and infant during breast-feeding and weaning — in shaping the self, many sociologists tend to focus on broader family and cultural issues.

Certainly, for many people — especially those who attend daycare and public schools from a very early age — peers and educators may be the primary forces in their socialization. However, in most traditional families, and particularly in my own, the family is the biggest sociological influence. In cases where the family is actively involved in the education of their children, their ability to shape their children's socialization is further increased. This is both generally true and specifically evident in my own experience of forming a personal identity.

Primary and Secondary Socialization

Sociologists speak of a variety of levels of socialization. The earliest, "primary" socialization almost always takes place within the family, and is the "most intense period of cultural learning" (Giddens, Duneier, & Appelbaum). One might suppose this means that every person raised within a family could argue that their family had the greatest influence on their personal identity formation. However, I would argue that in my case this influence was particularly strong.

Sociologists also speak of a "secondary" socialization that proceeds later in childhood, during which the main agents of socialization are schools, peer groups, and other influences such as organizations and the media. Secondary socialization is where students learn what society expects of them in social life. Schools in which children interact with peer groups provide more objective social relationships than families do: "The peer group exerts a most powerful social influence on the child. The peer group is composed of status equals… A child must earn his or her social position within the peer group; this position does not come naturally, as it does in the family. Interaction with a peer group loosens the child's bonds to the family; it provides both an alternative model for behavior and new social norms and values" (Kasper).

Home Schooling and Family-Centered Socialization

In my case, I remained at home for much longer than most children, as I was home-schooled for a significant period. My parents provided me with both a family environment and an education, but in the process much of the time I would have spent in secondary socialization at school was instead spent being further socialized by my family.

My experience demonstrates that although socialization may generally occur in one fashion — moving from home to school as the child reaches preschool or at least first-grade age — a person can still develop in other ways, becoming socialized and healthy. It is possible to learn about society by observing how parents and siblings interact with others outside the family, in addition to discovering social norms through peer relationships. Of course, I was not entirely isolated from secondary sources of socialization, and experience with peer groups did eventually come into my life. There was some degree to which my awareness of how to navigate social situations was slightly slowed by being raised mainly among adults, but in many ways it was not that I was generally unable to relate to society. Rather, I tended to relate in a more mature fashion than many of my peers.

While many sociologists are deeply invested in the importance of school and culture in the foundation of personal identity, some suggest that children may in fact be better socialized if their full immersion in school or broader culture is delayed as long as possible and replaced by socialization through the family. According to Dr. Raymond Moore, this evidence has been collected by many researchers from prestigious institutions such as Cornell and Stanford: "Bronfenbrenner found that at least up to the sixth grade, children who spend less of their elective time with their parents than their peers tend to become peer-dependent… Bandura noted that this tendency has in recent years moved down to preschool… little children are not best socialized by other kids; the more persons around them, the fewer meaningful contacts" (Moore).