Chapter Summary for Chapter 8
Socialization is the process through which infants become self-aware, knowledgeable people. G. H. Mead’s theory explains how young humans develop a sense of self.
A key stage is learning to see yourself as others see you. Mead sees a two-part self consisting of the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’. The ‘Me’ is the social sense, able to judge behaviour against social expectations. The ‘I’ is the spontaneous part of the self which responds to the ‘Me’. Piaget offers a model of cognitive development where children move through stages, becoming increasingly able to grasp abstract concepts, follow logical processes, spot false reasoning and see the world from points of view other than their own.
The main agent of primary socialization is the family. Secondary socialization takes place later and involves schools, peer groups, the media, workplaces and other organizations. Gender roles are learned during socialization as the process itself is gendered. Adults relate differently to the same child depending on whether they believe it to be female or male, with toys and storybooks reproducing gender-specific identities and behaviour. Children become aware of gender identity well before school age and will resist attempts to encourage them to try things they see as aimed at the other gender.
Freud’s theory emphasizes the importance of a child’s awareness of anatomical differences between women and men. Boys compete with the father for their mother’s attention but capitulate because, at the level of unconscious fantasy, they fear being castrated by the father (which is what the child fantasizes has happened to women). Chodorow drew on Freud’s idea of the unconscious, but saw the main relationship as that between children and mothers. The child has to become distanced from their relationship with the mother to develop a sense of individuality. But this separation is not as sharp for girls as for boys and this forms the template for adult women’s emphasis on relationships. Boys break more sharply, rejecting anything ‘feminine’ in order to secure their own masculinity. This forms the basis for later male inexpressiveness and valorization of independence. Chodorow has been criticized for not recognizing the internal contradictions which pull all people towards both separation and connection. Nonetheless, Gilligan’s research found that more women than men did define themselves in terms of personal relationships, whilst in making moral judgements men consider generalized abstract principles rather than the consequences of decisions on others.
We all grow older biologically, but stages such as childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age are socially constructed and culturally variable. Hence, sociologists use the concept of the life-course rather than the life-cycle, as it allows such variable stages to be compared and contrasted across societies.
Throughout the world, populations are ageing; this is referred to as the ‘greying’ of societies. People are having fewer children, particularly in the developed societies, and improvements in agriculture, sanitation, epidemic control and medicine have all contributed to people living longer. As a result, many common myths about old age and older people being inevitably debilitated and facing sedate, uninteresting lives are being eroded. Ageing can be seen as a combination of biological, psychological and social processes and ‘social age’ consists of the norms and expectations culturally associated with particular chronological ages.
Social gerontology has developed through several phases. The first generation of theorists adopted a functionalist approach, which emphasized that it is important for older people to disengage from the workplace and public life to enable younger people to take on these roles. The ‘second generation’ age stratification theory looks at the ways in which social structures, such as retirement policies, shape individual lives. For example, there is often a structural lag, as social policies fail to keep pace with changes in individuals’ lives. The third generation political economy perspective focuses on the role of the state and capitalism in maintaining existing power relations and social inequalities of class, gender and ethnicity across the ageing process.
Retirement is a major point of transition marking a change of status and a loss of income. Personal or occupational pensions are central to income inequality. Some older people may view themselves as quite well-off compared with either earlier generations or their own youth. Milne and Harding found two distinct ‘worlds’: the early years of retirement with good health, an occupational pension and a spouse can be quite comfortable compared with those over the age of 80 who live alone with few savings and declining health. Older women are more likely to be poor than their male counterparts and older people from ethnic minority groups tend to be poorer than their white counterparts.
The dependency ratio of young and elderly to the working population has increased, leading to fears of a global pensions and welfare crisis. However, dependency may not be as straightforward as it seems: older people still contribute by financially and emotionally supporting adult children, providing childcare for grandchildren, thus enabling their own children to gain employment. Many are also active in voluntary organizations.
Ageism is discrimination against people on the basis of age. Bytheway argues that terms like ‘the elderly’ and ‘old age’ are socially constructed categories, which act to legitimize the separation and management of people on the basis of chronological age by those who have something to gain from the inequalities associated with ageism.
The population of most societies is ageing, although life expectancy is still much greater in the developed world than elsewhere. Countries vary widely in how they plan to cope with the growing number of older people: China traditionally venerated its old but, as a result of the one-child policy, an increase in life expectancy and the decline of communist welfare services, one young adult can find him- or herself caring for two parents and four grandparents.
The relatively recent sociological interest in death, dying and bereavement now constitutes a specific field of study. Elias argued that in modern societies, death has been hidden behind the scenes of life, making it easier to get on with living but much harder to relate to people reaching or at the end of life. The loneliness of the dying in hospital wards and care homes, he said, was a major if unacknowledged issue. However, other sociologists have noted counter-trends such as the growth of the hospice movement providing more personalized and humane end-of-life care and the individualizing of funeral services for relatives.
