One of the 'news' making headlines on Fox News Channel this week was an advertisement on a rival broadcasting channel that talked about kids belonging not only to the parents but also to the community, and the importance of investing in social institutions which children interact with. I took that as an interesting backdrop for my blogpost about socialization. I will summarize the two videos that are part of this assignment and the two articles and how they all relate to the chapter.
Tony Porter presents his
Call to Men TED about the socialization of the male child by using
examples from his childhood and how he treats his own children (a boy 12 years
old and a girl 11 years old). He starts off by talking about what he has been
taught about being a man. This collective socialization is also referred to as
the man box. He further talks about how he has acted in the past as a result of his socialization for example in the way he has treated his kids on one occasion; he comforts
his young girl when she comes crying to him, and his son does the same, he
scolds him and tells him to stop crying and act like a man. He explains where
this particular mentality about the way we should treat the two sexes comes
from: Socialization.
I found it interesting his comparison of what boys are
taught about manhood, or manly traits, and the other side of the coin: what
this male collective socialization means to women. From the video, he says men
are taught that 'they are in charge, which means women are not; that men
lead, and you should just follow and do what we say; that men are superior;
women are inferior; that men are strong; women are weak; that women are of less
value, property of men, and objects, particularly sexual objects.’ This socialization
makes men think women are lesser people and in many cases it has been the societal
justification for violence against women. He ends the TED talk by calling on men to redefine what manhood means because the liberation of men is tied to the liberation of women.
Killing us softly is a documentary that looks at how media
shapes the socialization of men and women. Kilbourne starts by outlining the
role of media, which is more than selling products. Advertising spreads values
and concepts about love, sexuality, romance, success, and subtly defining what
normalcy should be and who we should be. As part of the socialization process,
we grow up inundated by advertisements of what the ideal woman should look like
and what it takes to achieve the perfect body, for example make up, nip here,
tuck there.
Perhaps the most negative effect of advertisement is the
objectification of women and the propagation of violence against women. She says objectification is the first
step of violence “ turning someone into a thing, and making them less than a
woman is the first step to violence. The second half deals with the ideas about
gender roles that are passed down to us. For example men should be powerful and
dominating, while women should be passive; when women are given power and
freedom, it is trivialized. She gives great examples of how women’s body parts
are used to sell products and the pornographic nature of advertising that plants
the idea of casual sex.The big take away from this talk is that the kind of socialization that upholds masculinity and devalues femininity robs us of the whole person that we have the potential to be.
These two videos are directly related to the chapter on Socialization in that they both talk about the various agents of socialization and the life course. Killing Us Softly talks about the role of media in shaping who we should be and how we go through live shaping and reshaping the concept of ourselves at a particular stage of life. For example when girls get to adolescences they start feeling insecure about bodies. A Call to Men explains the effect his peers had on him with the example about the girl she was supposed to rape; and the influence of family when he gives the example of father appreciating his strength as they go through a family tragedy.
Heath's paper Parents Socialization of Children highlights the importance of parents in a child's life and the outcomes as a result of parenting styles. it gave three types of parents: authoritarian, permissive and authoritative and the consequent personalities they children get. NYMag's Retro Wife talked about the choice of a small section of well-educated career women opting to stay at home and raise their children instead of pursuing careers or jungling both careers and children like the rest of the modern women. Well, two things - one this article was about financial freedom, and two - I do understand the importance of parents being there to teach their children to mind their Ps and Qs, but we have made so many strides as women such that in circa 2013, we should not be having a conversation about women choosing between kids and careers. I personally think articles like these fall into the whole socialization of gender roles that belongs in the past.
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