Essay about Agents of Socialization

Mass media influences me greatly in terms of the way I dress, look, feel, and approach the media itself. Often times I look to media in order to gain the latest tips and trends on today’s fashion and beauty, simply to be up to par with the many celebrities who always seem to look picture perfect. It seems as a teenage girl some part of my life revolve around this aspiration to be as beautiful as the girls in magazines, television, and the movies. As a result, I tend to want to wear makeup while continuously buying new clothes to strive for this ideal. Seeing as this is so unattainable, I often find myself feeling insecure about my face, body, and myself in general. Furthermore, the internet seems to

The toy section at Target had many clear differences in the toys for boys and the toys for girls. The types of toys that were out on the shelves were different, but also the way the toys were presented were different. Girls toys mainly consisted of stuffed animals, dress up clothes, babies and dolls including Bratz, Barbies and fairies. The primary colors of all these toys consisted of different shades of purple, pink, and white. There were bits of blue and yellow but it seemed that all the colors stood out and had a type of feminine aspect to them. Besides color, the girl’s toys were often soft and fuzzy or

In many shops, there seems to be an obvious separation between boys and girls items, for example, the birthday cards, books, clothes, and toys. This is shown in a variety of ways the boy's items are mainly the color blue and the books have pictures of either action figures, superheroes or tools. Whereas the girl's items are mainly the color pink. The books show pictures of fairies, princess, and Bratz. The cards also have the theme of the color pink for girls and blue for boys. The girl's cards have a lot of sparkles and pretty pictures whereas the boy's cards are covered in camo kind of illustrations and also have action figures on the covers. The children's clothes are separated into sections where there are labels for the boy's clothes and labels for the girl's clothes. The girl's clothing is all pretty and pink, it is covered in sparkles. Whereas boys clothing has camo patterns, blue colors, and pictures of action figures.

Think about Harro’s Cycle of Socialization. What have been key influences in your own socialization as a racial/ethnic being?

Envision yourself entering a toy department and noticing numerous diverse aisles. In one aisle, you encounter toys packaged in complementary and color triads colors that include building sets (such as “LEGO”, “LEGO Super Heroes”, and “Angry Birds”) and a wide selection of action figures—Spider Man, Transformers, The Dark Knight, Power Rangers, etc. In the next aisle, adjacent to the aisle with complementary and color triads colors, you find toys packaged in shades of pink and purple. These toys range from “Hello Kitty” dolls to “Barbie Dream” house play sets. Inside a toy department, such as Toys R Us, it is extremely difficult to retrieve a toy that is not marketed explicitly or subtly by gender. If toys were marketed only according to

One of the Agents of Socialization which I believe makes the most impact on a person's views and actions, and is the most influential in our day-to-day lives is our family. For the most part, children and teenagers grow up surrounded by their family and their parents and/or older siblings influence the way in which they believe the world and all the people in it operate. Even the lack of family or family members is influential in a child's socialization of family and gender roles within a household and within society. For example, a boy growing up in a household without a father figure may be more keen to be influenced by other Agents of Socialization like peers or media. Without the influence of a patriarchal system within the family a boy may miss out of the gender socialization that comes along with being a boy like

Toys that weren’t specifically targeted at boys or girls, gender neutral toys, were on walls with white, green, or yellow backgrounds. On the white wall, there were board games; on the green wall, there were group toys like Play-doh and Aqua Sand; on the yellow walls, there were toys targeted at specific age groups. Other than the yellow-walled toys, which had their aisles right next to the toys for boys and girls, the neutral toys were found at the ends of each gender aisle (at the end of each boy or girl aisle, there was a wall of group toys and board games). The gender neutral toys didn’t have bright colors and the fonts and packaging were very ordinary. There was also a lack of people printed onto the covers and if there were people on

Cognition plays a very important role in a person’s life. Cognition can be simply put as the mental capacities, associated to how humans can acquire, store, and retrieve information. In other words, cognition can be portrayed as something a person can recognize, understand, and feel. During class, we came across Dorothy Dinnerstien’s seven features of human cognition, which are; motivated, flexibly focused, structured, layered, affectively tinged, self-reflective, and social which has helped us understand the impact of cognition on our daily lives. We have seen illustrations of these seven features by watching the movies; The Wild Child, The Pawnbroker, and Dr. Strangelove and by reading the articles “On Memory and Childhood Amnesia,” “The Transformation of Man”, and “Reflections: Prologue of Our Time.” By watching those three films and reading those three articles, we have come to realize the influence of socialization on our development as a human being.

The four Agents of Socialization are the family, school, peers, and workplace. Family is a huge and very influential agent of Socialization, Families today are so vastly diverse and the environment a child grows up in has a lasting affect on them. Although children spent a lot of time with their family, a majority of their life is spent in school. School is where children are first introduced to authority outside of the home, and how they react is crucial. Peers are also another agent of Socialization, Influence is key in a peer group. Some peer groups alleviate pressure and stress in a good way, but others cause pressure and stress. The fourth agent of Socialization is the workplace. The workplace can be an uplifting motivational environment or a depressing environment. A person’s attitude about work contributes to their overall attitude about life.

On Tuesday, October the fourth, I visited the department store, Target, at two o’clock in the afternoon. As I went to observe the kids’ clothing and toys sections, I immediately was presented with the topics we covered in class. Not only were the boy and girl clothing sections completely separate, but most of the toys were departmentalized into “girl toys” and “boy toys.” As I made my way up one aisle and down the next, I made note of what the various signs read. Some of the sign names in which I wrote down included: animatronic toys/companion dolls/art and craft toys, Disney dress up/Disney dolls/Disney princess/Disney Frozen, fashion doll/Barbie accessories/Barbie dolls, LEGO/building sets, character toys/activity toys/action figures, and science and discovery/action figures/radio control. Reviewing the list of presented sign labels, one can almost immediately begin assuming which aisles are supplied for which genders. As custom, the pink Barbie doll and Disney princess aisles were visibly operating as an attraction for small girls, while the LEGO building sets and superhero aisles were provided for small boys. In uniform with today’s stereotypes, the girls were provided with the dainty dolls, bedazzling kits, and different colored lip glosses, while the boys were provided with ready-to-fight action figures, remote controller race cars, and LEGO building kits. Along with the toy section, the clothes section equally met the stereotypical standards of today’s society. The

The agents of socialization during my adolescence have provided situations and experiences that have shaped my personality and socialization. I have many situations that have influenced me in adolescence positively and negatively. My whole life I have been afraid of heights. If there were any need for me to go somewhere that is a high place, I would not go. If I ever went to six flags with my family, I wouldn’t get on any roller coaster. When my family and I went to St. Louis I would not get on the Arc with them. The reason for that is because, one day when I was 6 or 7, I was walking up the stairs, in an apartment, I was very sleepy and I fell down the stairs and had to go to

The first agent of socialization, Family, is the most important. When we are born, our parents, as well as other family members care for us. As we grow, they teach us basic skills as well as instill us with values, norms, and beliefs.

When walking into the girl isles of the toy store, the type of toys completely changed. When walking in the isles I noticed that the colors obviously changed to pink and purple. The type of toys in these isles completely contrasted the toys meant for the boys. Toys meant for girls usually comprised of barbie dolls, flowers, and many color books of princesses. Most toys in this section suggested tea parties and playing house. Many of the toys also promoted little girls to wear aprons and to bake cookies and other meals for fun. One of the interesting things about this isle however were how they had more "Life size" toys than the boys. The life size toys were usually barbie dolls where they could dress up the toy in the girls actual clothing to see what the barbie doll would look like. Another thing that I noticed was that most of the toys were very similar to one another because the girl isles comprised of different types of dolls rather than

Agents of socialization in short are the people, groups, and social institutions, as well as the interactions within these groups that influence a person's social and self-development. Agents of socialization are believed to provide the critical information needed for children to function successfully as a member of society. Some examples of such agents are family, neighborhood, schools, peers, religion, sports, the workplace, and especially the mass media. Each agent of socialization is linked to another. For example, in the media, symbolic images affect both the individual and the society, making the mass media the most controversial socialization agent. One of the most obvious places agents of socialization lay is in the malls of

In the news this August a Fox News reporter, Cody Derespina, described the causation and consumer reaction to “Target Going Gender Neutral in Some Sections”. After receiving some complaints from customers the retailer felt the need to address the amount of gendered language in the children sections and the colors being used to categorize certain toys. For example, one mother sent a tweet to Target with a picture of a sign saying “Building Sets” and below it reading “Girls’ Building Sets”. She stated that Target should not be being doing this and her tweet went viral with around 3,000 retweets. Target responded saying that “We’ve made sure to share this with the right teams for further review”. The article stressed there is another side to this argument where some consumers believed that Target should not being changing these gendered practices because this is how consumers have always been accustomed to shopping. “Leading up to that moment there’s been a broader conversation about gender and signs and using gender indicators, especially as it relates to kids,” Target spokesperson Molly Snyder told Fox News (Derespina 2015). This debate over gendering toys and other objects at Target brings attention to the cultural scripts used in American culture that aid in the creation of gender segregation and discrimination, and shed light on what many feminists are striving for in new identity politics.