Blog # 6 Socialization

Today’s blog it is about the socialization, what we learn to be? What the agents of socialization teach us?

The way in which a child is raised have a lot of influence on the lifestyle the person will once live. Values, beliefs, knowledge, language, behaviors and common etiquette's are all passes on from generation to generation. A result of good values and mores to a child may result in a successful lifestyle, possible filled with expensive material objects. However, Terri D. Heath is not concerned with these results. In his article, “parents socialization of children” the concentration is more on personal feelings a child has, as he grows into an adult. In other words, Heath believes that a good influence on a child will give them good self esteem, a happier outlook, and the ability to be social. The point Heath is trying to get across is that parents do affect children heavily, especially in their formative years. Parents are a powerful influence, and with a good foundation children can live a satisfying life. Through many examples Heath shows worldwide proof that parents are the ones that influence their children’s life. Some of the examples are quite interesting because different international societies are represented and it seems that there are more similarities than differences in parents’ socialization of children across cultures. “This discussion of parental socialization techniques describes and illustrates how the balance and interaction of parental control, power, and support result in particular child behaviors. Although Chinese parents spend little time each week with their young children, they serve as powerful socialization agents in the development of their children’s personalities.” Also “although much speculation exists about why minority populations are over-represented in reports of child maltreatment in the United States, it is apparently not because corporal punishment is a preferred method of parental control for either native-born or foreign-born Mexican Americans. Finally, parental support of particular child behaviors encourages the development of what Israeli mothers describe as autonomy and Japanese mothers describe as obedience.”

I belief that an involved parent is not one who spends the majority of the day near his/her child but rarely interacting with the child but those who uses opportunities to share activities such as teaching, reading together or even playing; that supportive relationship will have greater expectations of the children’s behavior and the children will demonstrate better outcome!  

Woman are being told that they place is in the house, being a caregiver, and that they are better and faster than man in doing all the chores of the house. The article “retro wife” by Lisa Miller talks about a woman who had a nice career but at the end she give up because she decided to give her children’s all the attention that they will need of a mother. While she is at home that father is working and providing for them. That's why is called retro because is a woman that lives in the 21 century but her beliefs are similar to the woman of the past. It is true that it can be a dream when there are two people shearing the responsibility of being parents! But we leave in a society where that responsibility of two is rarely seems, where a woman have to be the two roles: mother and father, working and doing the chores of the house. We are being socialized that the man can’t have the two roles because they are not good as a woman in the house but there exists men that indeed are father and mother but the society seems them as guy!This is when the stereotype comes in ranking people for how they look and how they act.

My mother is an example of the article “retro wife’ even my grandmother but the difference between my mother and my grandmother is that my mother after all her 3 children were bigger enough to go to school by themselves she went back to work, living us with my father because he already was retire from work. The roles were invert but both were there supporting us and teaching how to behave!

We watch two videos one is called “A call to men” and the other one “killing us softly.” The video “A call to men” by Tony Porter, is about how the men are socialized in our society. Socialization is the process through which people learn their cultures basic norms, values and behaviors. Porter emphasizes that “men has to be strong, can’t show emotions with the exception of anger, that are to supposed to lead and being fallow, that men are superior and woman inferior and that woman are objects specially sexual objects.” Men still very rigidly socialized to repress all kind of human qualities in them self, incapable to show feelings. This socialization consists in “a man box” as Porter explains this man box is teaching how to build a man, to fallow those guides if they want to be a real men. Some of the examples are:

-          - Do not show weakness or fear

-         -  Do not cry or openly express emotions

-          - Do not be “like a woman”

The value and norms passed from father to son is never getting out of that box if you want to continue being a man. Many have fear of getting out, they fear that the society will not accept them if they do not fallow those norms. Tony Porter talks about his own experiences when his pride of men was more important than to help a girl that probably needed someone help emphasizing that it didn't matter what could happen to that girl because the most important thing was to make the others belief that he just had relations with the girl and that it was good. He shows an equation: less value + property + objectification = violence against woman arguing that those are the reasons why there is violence in this world against the woman. At the end of the video Porter said that it is okay not being dominating, that it is okay having feelings and emotions and that it is okay to promote equality.

The video “killing us softly” by Jean Kilbourne is about the image and descriptions of the woman in the media. Kilbourne emphasizes that “advertising tell us who we are and who we should be, tell us that the most important is how we look, surrounding us of image of absolutely beauty” woman from early ages learn that they have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to achieve perfection and felling guilty because they fail but failure is inevitable because no one can be perfect. She argues that we live in a time where a woman becomes real objects such as the bottle of a beer; woman body is turn into things! Turning a human being into a thing is the first step to justify violence, the person is being dehumanize and that message  that it is given to young girls is that they have to be impossible cute, extremely sexy, extremely thin and that they will fail because is impossible.

Many girls idealized themselves just like those girls that the media show to us telling them self: if they are like that why I can’t be like them or if she have that why I can’t have it; those girls spend most of their time trying to be like them and wanting all that they have just because the media show to us that it is right, but is it? I don’t think so many girls have eating disorders or even died just because they tried to become “perfect” just as the media tell us. The power of the media is being hegemony, making the people believe their perspective, making people believe that it is right.

Those two video relates to the chapter 5 “power” and chapter 6 “socialization”.  In the video “A call to men” the power it seems on how men are being socialized, they learn that they are the strongest one that one that rules, that one that had to be fallow that one who has the power. Many cultures indeed are formed by a patriarchy government; an example is the United States government which is ruled by a man not a woman!  Also we can see the matrix of domination between man and woman. The woman is the fragile one, that weak one but men are the strongest one. We still see inequality of gender no matter how hard a woman tried to be like men they will never be accepted as one in the society, an example of this is a men and a woman can have the same job but who will gain more money? Of course the men!

In the video “killing us softly” we can see how the power tactics are being used as method to control the people through the media. The media make us beliefs that we need to be just like those unreal people. The woman is being used by the media as an object, as an extremely sexy and thin object! Men are used by the media but always they are the one who have the power, the one who mistreat the woman. So if the media promote that it’s okay to hit a woman then it is okay to do it?