5.2 Socialization Across the Life Course
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you should be able to:
- Explain how socialization occurs and recurs throughout life
- Apply socialization to age-related transition points
- Describe when and how resocialization occurs
Socialization isn’t a one-time or even a short-term event. We aren’t “stamped” by some socialization machine as we move along a conveyor belt and are thereby socialized once and for all. Socialization is a lifelong process.
In the United States, socialization throughout the life course is determined greatly by age norms and “time-related rules and regulations” (Settersten 2002). As we grow older, we encounter age-related transition points that require socialization into a new role, such as becoming school-age, entering the workforce, or retiring. For example, the U.S. government mandates that all children attend school. Child labor laws, enacted in the early twentieth century, nationally declared that childhood should be a time of learning, not of labor.
Big Picture: Life After High School Around the World
In the United States, high school graduates have increasingly focused on college attendance. In recent years, about two-thirds of high school graduates have enrolled in college between their teen years and the age of twenty-four. About one-third of the same population participates in the workforce, meaning that they are employed or are looking for employment (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2020). Of those who attend college, most (about 69 percent) are considered immediate enrollers, meaning that they begin college in the first fall academic term immediately after their high school graduation (NCES 2020).
Other countries, especially high-income nations in Western Europe, have similar trends in college education, but fewer students start immediately. Gap years, overseas experiences, or mandatory wait times all lead students to a wide array of pre-college destinations. In Denmark, for example, the number of students who take a “year out” is so high that the government has sought to give students cash bonuses for attending immediately (Anderson 2009). For several decades, only about 25 percent of Denmark’s high school graduates enrolled in college right away, and that number continued to drop in the 2010s, with a record low of only 15 percent in 2018 (Ritzau 2019). Compare that to the US numbers mentioned above, where over two-thirds of the students enroll in college immediately. And note that in Denmark, college is almost universally free.
In the United States, this life transition point is socialized quite differently. Taking a year off is much less common than in other countries, but has certainly picked up in recent years. In most cases, US youth are encouraged to select a few target colleges or potential workforce options by their late teens and to get started on those pathways soon after high school. As mentioned above, many US students do not attend college, but most of those students are in the workforce (including the military).
Other nations have entirely different approaches based on available educational institutions, financial circumstances, and family needs. In some nations, students often go to college soon after high school, but do so in other countries (including the US). Dozens of nations require military conscription—military service—for men, and a few (such as Sweden, Israel, Norway, Eritrea, and Venezuela) for women as well.
How might your life be different if you lived in one of these other countries? Can you think of similar social norms—related to life age-transition points—that vary from country to country?
Many of life’s social expectations are made clear and enforced on a cultural level. Through interacting with others and watching others interact, the expectation to fulfill roles becomes clear. While in elementary or middle school, the prospect of having a boyfriend or girlfriend may have been considered undesirable, the socialization that takes place in high school changes these expectations. By observing the excitement and importance attached to dating and relationships within the high school social scene, it quickly becomes apparent that one is now expected not only to be a child and a student but also a significant other. Graduation from formal education—high school, vocational school, or college—involves socialization into a new set of expectations.
Educational expectations vary not only from culture to culture but also from class to class. While middle- or upper-class families may expect their daughter or son to attend a four-year university after graduating high school, other families may expect their child to immediately begin working full-time, as many within their family have done before.
Sociology in the Real World: The Long Road to Adulthood for Millennials
Socialization differences also vary by generation. Millennials (those born in the early 1980s to mid-1990s) have very different attitudes about when childhood ends, when the prime of life begins, and when people become “old.” For example, Millennials thought childhood ended later and people became older earlier than did Baby Boomers and Gen Xers at the same age.
Millennials were deeply affected by the financial Recession in 2008. While the recession was in full swing, many were in the process of entering, attending, or graduating from high school and college. With employment prospects at historical lows, large numbers of graduates were unable to find work, sometimes moving back in with their parents and struggling to pay back student loans.
According to the New York Times, this economic stall caused the Millennials to postpone what most Americans consider to be adulthood: “The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life” (Henig 2010). The term Boomerang Generation describes recent college graduates, for whom lack of adequate employment upon college graduation often leads to a return to the parental home (Davidson, 2014).
The five milestones that define adulthood, Henig writes, are “completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying, and having a child” (Henig 2010). These social milestones are taking longer for Millennials to attain, if they’re attained at all. Sociologists wonder what long-term impact this generation’s situation may have on society as a whole.
In the process of socialization, adulthood brings a new set of challenges and expectations, as well as new roles to fill. As the aging process moves forward, social roles continue to evolve. Pleasures of youth, such as wild nights out and serial dating, become less acceptable in the eyes of society. Responsibility and commitment are emphasized as pillars of adulthood, and men and women are expected to “settle down.” During this period, many people enter into marriage or a civil union, bring children into their families, and focus on a career path. They become partners or parents instead of students or significant others.
Just as young children pretend to be doctors or lawyers, play house, and dress up, adults also engage in anticipatory socialization, the preparation for future life roles. Examples would include a couple who cohabitates before marriage or soon-to-be parents who read infant care books and prepare their home for the new arrival. As part of anticipatory socialization, financially able adults begin planning for their retirement, saving money, and looking into future healthcare options. The transition into any new life role, despite the social structure that supports it, can be difficult.
About a decade after the nation began to recover from the Recession, it was hit by another. Millennials, who had entered a very challenging employment situation, were saddled with debt and had very little in savings. By July 2020, the Millennial unemployment rate was 11.5 percent, which was higher than the unemployment rate during the 2008 Recession. Gen Z, the group of people born after the Millennials, fared even worse—with an 18 percent unemployment rate (Hoffower 2020). The cycle of financial insecurity and the potential socialization impacts may happen again in this decade.
Resocialization
In the process of resocialization, old behaviors that were helpful in a previous role are removed because they are no longer useful. Resocialization is necessary when a person moves to a senior care center, goes to boarding school, or serves a sentence in the prison system. In the new environment, the old rules no longer apply. The process of resocialization is typically more stressful than normal socialization because people have to unlearn behaviors that have become customary to them. While resocialization has a specific meaning, many organizations consider their training or retraining processes to embody elements of resocialization.
The most common way resocialization occurs is in a total institution where people are isolated from society and are forced to follow someone else’s rules. A ship at sea is a total institution, as are religious convents, prisons, or some cult organizations. They are places cut off from a larger society. The 6.9 million Americans who lived in prisons and penitentiaries at the end of 2012 are also members of this type of institution (U.S. Department of Justice 2012).
Many individuals are resocialized into an institution through a two-part process. First, members entering an institution must leave behind their old identity through what is known as a degradation ceremony. In a degradation ceremony, new members lose the aspects of their old identity and are given new identities. The process is sometimes gentle. To enter a senior care home, an elderly person must often leave a family home and give up many belongings that were part of their long-standing identity.
In other situations, the degradation ceremony can be more extreme. New prisoners lose freedom, rights (including the right to privacy), and personal belongings. When entering the military, soldiers have their hair cut short. Their old clothes are removed, and they wear matching uniforms. These individuals must give up any markers of their former identity to be resocialized into an identity as a “soldier.”
Figure 5.8: In basic training, members of the Air Force are taught to walk, move, and look like each other. (Credit: Staff Sergeant Desiree N. Palacios, U.S. Air Force/Wikimedia Commons)
After new members of an institution are stripped of their old identity, they build a new one that matches the new society or societal setting. In the military, soldiers go through basic training together, where they learn new rules and bond with one another. They follow structured schedules set by their leaders. Soldiers must keep their areas clean for inspection, learn to march in correct formations, and salute when in the presence of superiors.
Learning to deal with life after having lived in a total institution requires yet another process of resocialization. In the US military, soldiers learn discipline and a capacity for hard work. They set aside personal goals to achieve a mission, and they take pride in the accomplishments of their units. Many soldiers who leave the military transition these skills into excellent careers. Others have significant challenges upon leaving, uncertain about the outside world and what to do next. The process of resocialization to civilian life is not a simple one.
5.1 and 5.2 Learning Activities: Self, Self-Development, Social Roles and Identity, Negotiation
Make sure to return to our Canvas assignment to complete the substantive reading before completing these learning assessments.
