Discuss the importance of socialisation.

Socialisation is defined as “the process whereby the helpless human infant gradually becomes a self-aware, knowledgeable person, skilled in the ways of the culture into which he or she was born”. (Giddens, 284). Everybody, man, woman and child goes through the process of socialisation throughout the whole duration of their life not just when an infant. Socialisation or as anthropologists refer to it, enculturation does not end once the child becomes a teenager for example. The process is on-going throughout ones lifespan. Socialisation is most important however when the child is a new-born till the age of three as this is when a child’s brain develops the most. This is why love, emotional support …show more content…

Parents teach all of the skills they learn in the first stage of socialisation which set a base a learning stepping stone to what they will learn and what is expected of them in the future and in the secondary stage of the socialisation process. This is why it is deemed as the most important stage. We as members of our society are expected to follow the rules and expectations of the culture which we live. We are brought into this world completely helpless and defenceless. Our parents supply us with all that we need to survive and the culture we live in supplies them with everything they need in order to take proper care of us. In western society our culture expects us to be clothed appropriately for the weather, learn to talk in the language which that of our country speaks and interact with others by beginning school at the age of four years old.
As I have mentioned above the process of socialisation occurs throughout a persons’ entire lifespan. It is extremely important that the process does not end in the primary stage even though it is deemed the most important stage. Secondary socialisation is just as important in my opinion. During this stage the child is introduced to a number of agencies of socialisation. “Agencies of socialisation are groups or social contexts in which significant processes of socialisation occur”. (Giddens, 288) The first