Stages of Socialization and the Life Course
Stages of Socialization
Pursuant to G.H. Mead, the self, as it did for Cooley, reflects the cumulative total of people’s conscious understanding of their personality as distinct from others. However, his general view of socialization as a lifetime mechanism influenced Mead’s philosophy of self.
He assumed that self, like Cooley, is a social product that emerges from interactions with other individuals. However, as babies and young girls, we are unable at first to interpret the significance of the actions of humans. They have stepped beyond themselves as kids learn to assign meanings to their actions. When kids can think of themselves the same way they can think about someone else, they start getting a sense of self.
According to Mead, the process of self-forming takes place in three separate steps. Imitation is the first. Children mimic the behavior of adults at this stage without knowing it. By moving a toy vacuum cleaner or even a stick around the room, a little boy could ‘help’ his parents vacuum the floor.
Children recognize actions as real roles at the play stage: doctor, firefighter, and race car driver, and so on, and continue to take on those roles in their play. Little children often talk to the doll in both loving and scolding tones in doll play, as if they were parents, then respond to the doll the way a child responds to his or her parents.
This change from one position to another builds the capacity of children to assign their feelings the same meanings; and acts that are offered to them by other members of society, another crucial step in creating a self.
The self is composed of two parts, according to Mead, the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ The ‘I’ is the reaction of the individual to other people and to society at large; the ‘I’ is a self-concept that consists of how important the person is to others, that is, relatives and friends. The ‘I’ is speaking of and referring to the ‘I’ as well as to other entities.
‘I’ respond to criticism, for example, by carefully evaluating it, sometimes modifying and sometimes not, depending on whether I think the criticism is true. I recognize why people view me as a rational person who is still able to listen. Kids eventually establish a ‘me’ as they switch off parts in their plays. They practice reacting to the impression any time they see themselves from the eyes of someone else.
The child must understand what is anticipated not only by one other person but by a whole community during Mead’s third stage, the game stage. For starters, on a baseball team, each player follows a series of rules and ideas common to the team and baseball.
Kids measure their actions through norms assumed to be maintained by the “other out there,” these behaviors of “other” a faceless person “out there.” Following the rules of a baseball game teaches children to follow the rules of society’s game as reflected in laws and guidelines. Children also developed a social identity during this level.
Socialization and the Life Course
Throughout the different periods of the life course, socialization begins, most generally classified as childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age.