ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three models of socialization: Laissez-faire model, Clay molding model, and the conflict model. These three models makes assertions about the nature of early social interactions, but in each case these are based more on a priori considerations than from empirical study of those interactions. Socialization begins with adults' efforts to induce children to comply with requests referring to the ordinary, practical, very concrete minutiae of everyday living. A mother does not impinge on an inert child; the outcome of any attempt to influence behavior will depend on his or her state and condition at that particular moment. Given children's initial linguistic incompetence, one might expect that adults would communicate to preverbal infants primarily by nonverbal means; as children become more able to comprehend language verbal messages would then gradually increase and replace these non-verbal behaviors. Parental control of one kind or another is very much a feature of children's social experience during the first year of life.
