ABSTRACT
A very great deal of literature around socialisation focuses upon what adult parents do to babies, children and young adults. It is clearly the case that children learn a great deal from their carers. It must be remembered that the child may be largely cared for, and learn mobility and language, from a range of people including grandparents (especially grandmothers), childminders and baby sitters, siblings, neighbours who act as ‘aunts’ or other ‘fictive kin’. To this must be added the huge and rapidly expanding range of other influences, the most obvious examples being television, video and computer games as well as more traditional media such as comics or storybooks.
