Examine the ways in which two of the following agencies may shape the process of socialisation: family; education; mass media; religion. (24 marks)

Socialisation is the process of learning social norms and values, these for example, things like manners and ways to behave around people and what behaviour is suitable for your gender. From birth onwards all individuals go through a process of socialisation during which they learn the norms and values of their society and certain factors influence your interpretation of society and what norms and values you have been taught.

Family socialisation begins the process through which learn and develop to be the adult persons they become. For some adults, their interaction with family continues in such a close relationship that the family maintains a dominant role in their on-going socialisation. Most of the time growing up is spent with family and so this is what is called a primary relationship, it’s important that we learnt the dos and don’ts from them. However when you get older it becomes less important in the socialisation process as other agencies take over from the family. Comparisons between classes show big differences, for example it has been proven that working class families use more simple sentences whereas middle class use more complex sentences which links to achievements in school, this shows how different class families contribute to family socialisation.

Child rearing practices such as nutrition, sleeping and use of toilets are to be trained at home. However, all these practices keep changing from society to society. In Asian countries these practices are experienced with simplicity and relaxation on the contrary rigid practices are followed in western countries since in western countries such as Britain, France, Germany, etc., the mother does not be with the child for a long period of time. However, Asian mother stays with the child for a long period in comparison to western mother.
In addition to child rearing practices, rewarding, threatening, punishing, bargaining and pleading help to socialize a particular child. Intention of all these methods is to make the child conformed to the society.

As far as sociologists are concerned, early childhood experiences affect the personality development. Both love and affection of parents strongly influence the development of his personality. At the same time, lack of warmth, love and affection form an affectionless figure or personality. When a particular individual has both over-affections, he becomes an unbalanced character. The individual who has the excessive love and affection is not self-confident while who is rejected can be harmful to the society. Research has also shown that middle class families shows more encouragement when it comes down to education. Also from socialisation of the family we learn the correct behaviour for our gender.

Another agency of socialisation would be the mass media. This influences the decisions we make and what opinions we have towards society. The Mass Media are the different processes that facilitate communication between the sender of a message and the receiver of that message. It plays an important role in the socialisation of children. In fact, there are many types of media; these include newspapers, magazines, radio, films, CDs, Internet, and television. These kinds of media, especially television, affect children's and adult's behaviour in different ways.

Having the mass media as one of our major agents of socialisation could be very hard on our society today. When watching different TV shows seeing all those actors and actresses with these great figures hurt many people in the society today. In other ways watching TV could be a good thing when an actor or actress is on TV in different shows or music it could bring many good things like being a role model for an adolescent teenager who wants someone to looks up too. Having these agents is a great guideline for people who want to start with a great start with their children or wants to be a good communicator.

Some programmes influence the socialisation of the children as the language that is used is not language that a child should not be listening to, in addition to TV programmes there are video games that include violence and this also influences a child growing up and children imitate what they see as they think it’s the right things to do. There are also some movies that have a lot of violence and bad words and children love these kinds of movies. Children like and learn how to use knives, guns and explosives because they see it on TV. Sometimes children take the role of their superheroes in real life because they see their favourite actors using these weapons. For example; when children watch the actor stealing a car on TV, they learn from it and they also want to steal because they want to be like their superheroes. The media plays a bigger role in the socialisation of the children than the family because they are constantly surrounded by it so learn different things everyday which they shouldn’t be learning.

In conclusion the family and the media play big roles in the socialisation of children as they are influenced by society and what it is teaching them. Society today sees children as more aggressive and violent than ever before as they have more access to the media and less access to their parents and now both parents work. Which means society will change and children will act older than they actually are.