Role of family in Socialization!
The family on account of its several characteristics is of strategic importance in socialization. Firstly, it is the family which gets the child first.
The child is born into it and is a social blank, more plastic than he will ever be again.
The process of socialization begins within the family. It prepares the ground work upon which the agencies coming afterwards build. It monopolizes the time and experiences of the child during his formative years. Secondly, the influence of the family upon the child is deeper and more abiding than that of other groups.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The child drops his childhood playmates, changes his school, forgets the school fellows, but the parents retain their close contact with him throughout most of his early life. Thirdly, family is a primary group. Its members are imbued with ‘we’ feeling which is a helpful agent in transmitting the family attitude and sentiments.
Fourthly, no other single group satisfies the needs of the child as much as the family does. No group can compete with the family in that respect. Fifthly, in family there are both kinds of relationships —the authoritarian and the equalitarian. Each type of relationship supplies a unique and necessary element in socialization and the family provides them both.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The child learns to be a man, a husband, and a father mainly through having lived in a family headed by a man, a husband, and a father. Lastly, the child continues to identify himself with the family forever. It is the only group which is always there in the life of man.
Thus on account of its strategic position the family, more than any other group, exerts a persistent, intimate and far-reaching influence on the habits, attitudes and social experiences of the child. It plays the foremost role in the formation of personality. It occupies a key place in social organization.