DISCUSS THE VIEW THAT INDIVIDUALS LEARN GENDER IDENTITY LARGELY THROUGH AGENTS OF SECONDAERY SOCIALISATION.

Gender identity is an individual’s private sense and subjective experience of their own gender. This is generally about how an individual is associated into a male or female category.
Primary socialisation takes place at the very start of an individual’s life; it is the first experience of socialisation a person will experience. The most dominant agent of primary socialisation is family and is predominantly the most important stage of an individual’s social encounters. During the course of one’s life the influence of the family can decrease, secondary agents of socialisation can become more dominant than primary agents of socialisation. It is possible that secondary agents of socialisation may socialise individuals into a gender identity that different greatly from the gender identity they were socialised into primarily. That can often be the case as an individual grows up they spend less time with their family and more time with secondary agents of socialisation such as peers and in educational institutes. However without initial primary socialisation (with family) secondary socialisations will become increasingly more difficult for an individual and this could cause an increase in criminal activity.

As I have explained, during the course of a person’s life an individual can become to be more affected by agents of socialisation other than the family. The majority of children in Britain are educated in schools between the ages of 5 and 16. As a result of this many of these children would be socialised by the education system. The education system is an agent of socialisation most children in the UK are exposed to at some point. Perhaps the education system is a greater influence on gender identity as many come to spent more time at school than engaged in activities with their family. There are many reasons to assume that the family is the most important influence a person’s gender identity. Children are socialised into their roles by their parents and their family member’s children learn norms and values first and foremost from the family, but secondary socialisation takes over and enforces gender identity further.