ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how aspects of the social structure of various socialization settings set the stage for the socialization processes that take place. It considers some of the dimensions of social context that can be expected to affect socialization and focuses on a small sample of socialization contexts selected to reflect variations on some of these dimensions. The conditions, under which individuals become committed to the roles they play, or conversely alienated from these roles, are important considerations for the topic of socialization. The socialization ratio tends to be larger and interactions more intense and intimate in family, peer group, and re-socialization contexts, whereas the socialization ratio is smaller in school and, perhaps, work settings. In the minds of many people, the family is the context most closely associated with the topic of socialization. The single-parent family is an increasingly frequent phenomenon, having substantial consequences for child socialization.
