Read the Socialization: From Infancy to Old Age Chapter and answer a couple questions - Essay Example

Assignment Assignment The family is considered to be the most important agent of socialization because every individual is nurtured and broughtup to be who he is in accordance with one’s familial beliefs and views. If the family members know how to maintain a positive environment then the child will grow to be happy and well rounded. Moreover, the child is heavily influenced by the presence of other elders in his environment as well, for example the environment provided to him at his school or Montessori.

As I moved through my childhood and adolescence into adult years, the importance of family as an agent of socialization changed dramatically; when I was younger, I needed the support of older people around me when trying to do things on my own and was also able to learn from the manner in which they conducted themselves in front of others. As I grew older however, I learnt how to make my own decisions and not depend on them as much, the trait of independence that they helped inculcate within me.

As I began to make my own decisions and go to them lesser when encountering problems, I was able to understand the change and the value of their presence in my upbringing. These agents are both formal and informal; the formal agents refer to the school teachers and other adults that children come across, who make a great impact on their lives. Informal agents continue during the course of one’s lifetime, as people continue to grow and learn, the process of learning does not end. During the course of one’s life, the biological process of aging is reflected greatly when comparing that individual with another.

However, it must be understood that this process is simply a social construction that crops up due to the patterns and variations in every individual’s growing years. Childhood is the age when an individual is still learning how to process and grow as he moves into adolescence where he learns how to maneuver his emotions and become more responsive to his own actions towards others. The sense of accepting responsibility and accepting one’s own character is the difference between childhood and adolescence.

Once an individual has matured in that respect, he moves into adulthood where he learns to become accountable not only for himself, but for others who are close to him; he begins to form his family and take control of all aspects of his life. Old age occurs when an individual’s receptive senses begin to slow down because of the slowing down of his bodily processes and then comes a period of rest in his life. In the United States, most people associate with the adulthood phase of life because that is when they begin to work and make something of themselves; there is a noticeable trend of influencing others and being responsible for one’s own actions.

These stages are a mere social construction because there is no appropriate or specific age as to when an individual grasps onto his own intellectual capability and embraces the same. A specific age helps in demarcating the general age at which people cross over from childhood to adolescence and then to adulthood and then move into their old age. Maturity is the main factor upon which these aspects depend, and thus, age may be understood as a mere social construction in order to help people better understand these fragments of one’s life in order to assist in comparisons with one another.