Ways of Thinking...: 2.06 Family as an Agent of Socialization

Thursday, October 16, 2025

2.06 Family as an Agent of Socialization

Please review this NY Magazine piece about Carolyn Dweck's book, Mindset.

Today's Lesson:

What are the ways that family influences individuals?

What are the ways that family is changing in the U.S.?

How does this research compare to your family?

Family, The Most Influential Agent of Socialization: Family Nurture shapes our Nature

As we explained during our lesson about nature and nurture, humans are born helpless but wired to connect with other humans. This connection shapes our self-concept before we are even conscious of it. The nurture we receive affects our brain growth and literally makes our brain (our nature) grow. Human brain development happens most rapidly and greatly in the first few years after birth. This UNICEF website (2016) explains what experts have concluded about brain development. Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel explains the latest conclusions in this 5 min video.

The point is that much growth and development happens in the earliest years of human life so our first caregivers have an enormous impact on who we become. These caregivers are organized around a family - an emotional and economic unit that are committed to one another and care for one another. This definition emphasizes that family is not just a biological or legal unit but also a social one, defined by the bonds, roles, and functions members perform for each other and for society, such as socialization and providing support.

Manifest Lessons

Besides the way that family influences human nature, family also teaches us how to think and act from a young age. For example, when I was young my parents taught me to say please and thank you. They strictly told me to never smoke cigarettes and to try my best when doing a job. These direct lessons that we are taught intentionally are called manifest lessons.

Latent Lessons

However, much of what we learn is taught to us unintentionally by watching our family. These lessons are called latent lessons. Before we are even conscious of it, we watch and imitate our family and absorb the lessons as part of our self. This influence occurs even if we are not aware of it or we do not intend for it. In my life, I was influenced to have certain mannerisms and gestures just like my parents. And I considered careers that were just like them too.

Google Form for today's lesson.

Answer individually

1. What are some ways that you are similar to your family? Is this latent or manifest? Why?

Family and the Self

Longitudinal research from Yabiku, Axinn and Thorton (1999) American Journal of Sociology) explains that the way that families are structured/integrated with one another when a child is young, affects the children's self-esteem when they are adults.

This research supports the idea that family nurture such as warmth, monitoring, and security all affect children's "self" and their self-esteem. Similarly, research from Krauss and Robins finds many ways that family environment influences how children feel about themselves enduring into their later life as adults.

From Krauss, S., Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2020). Family environment and self-esteem development: A longitudinal study from age 10 to 16. Journal of personality and social psychology, 119(2), 457–478. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000263

The conclusion cited by Kraus and Robins in the last paragraph above shows that

some parents will praise their children with good intentions trying to boost their children's self-esteem. However, this praise can have the opposite effect.

Dweck's Mindset and the Influence of Family on Our Self as Learners

Carolyn Dweck writes about the latent effects that parents can have on their children's sense of self as learners in her book Mindset.

I was featured as a storyteller for a nonprofit organization that teaches literacy to adults. At their story telling slam, I explained how my own sense of self as a learner was affected by my parents and how, subsequently, Dweck's reasearch influenced my sense of self as a learner. Watch my story on Facebook here or embedded below:

More about Dweck's Research

Carol Dweck explains how parents, and eventually schools, both can unintentionally create a fixed mindset that actually prevents learning.
See the first chapter of her book here.
This Atlantic article the latest update to Dweck's research which shows that praise cannot be empty. It must be directed in specific nuanced ways to promote growth.
This NPR review of the book includes an excerpt and an interview.
This NY Magazine article explains how to apply Dweck's research to parenting and talking to kids.
Brain Pickings review of Dweck's Research provides a thorough explanation and a few quotes from the book.
Dweck explains her work on this TED Talk
And she explains how we can teach a growth mindset in this talk from Stanford U.
Farnam Street blog explains the two mindsets.

2. Using Dweck's research, explain how you have been shaped to have either a "growth mindset" or a "fixed mindset."

Cross-Cultural Example of Family and Production of Culture and the Self
Life Lessons from Chinese Culture from NPR shows how families influence kids to accept aspects of their culture,What are the hidden messages in the storybooks we read to our kids? That's a question that may occur to parents as their children dive into the new books that arrived over the holidays. And it's a question that inspired a team of researchers to set up a study. Specifically, they wondered how the lessons varied from storybooks of one country to another.

The Changing Structure of Family

3. If I told you that I live with my family, who would you assume I mean?

4. What are some other ways to define family different than above?

My family and I dressed up as the family from Despicable Me one Halloween. This was one of my favorite costumes but it also is an interesting example of the changing family in the U.S. Most often, when Americans think of "family" they think of the nuclear family - two heterosexual partners, married and their children. Although this is an ideal in many Americans' minds, sociologists question whether or not it was ever a reality. Most family researchers will trace this back to the post-WWII era when these types of families seemed to peak. However, the romanticized notion may be from media that created an ideal image of this family even if the reality was much different then and certainly is now.

The Impossible Ideal of the Nuclear Family

One sociologist who researched the American family extensively using historical methods is Stephanie Coontz who writes,

Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man’s home has never been his castle, the ‘male breadwinner marriage’ is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz provides a myth-shattering examination of two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues, and neither does any other era from our cultural past. This revised edition includes a new introduction and epilogue, looking at what has and has not changed since the original publication in 1992, and exploring how the clash between growing gender equality and rising economic inequality is reshaping family life, marriage, and male-female relationships in our modern era.

Here is a review of Coontz's book from the New Republic.

Here is a review of her work on Goodreads.

Changing Household Structure

From the PEW Research Center, Trends Shaping the US (2017):

Americans’ lives at home are changing. Following a decades-long trend, just half of U.S. adults were married in 2015, down from 70% in 1950. As marriage has declined, the number in cohabiting relationships (living with an unmarried partner) rose 29% between 2007 and 2016, from 14 million to 18 million. The increase was especially large among those ages 50 and older: 75% in the same period. The “gray divorce” rate – divorces among those 50 and older – roughly doubled between 1990 and 2015.
Also, a record number of Americans (nearly 61 million in 2014) were living in multigenerational households, that is, households that include two or more adult generations or grandparents and grandchildren. Growing racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. helps explain some of the rise in multigenerational living. The Asian and Hispanic populations overall are growing more rapidly than the white population, and those groups are more likely than whites to live in multigenerational family households.

Here is a graph from Phil Cohen showing different types of households by decade 1900-2017:

5. What is one conclusion that can you make from the graph?

Americans are more accepting of the changing structures than they have ever been. From the Pew:

As family structures change in U.S., a growing share of Americans say it makes no difference
The American family is changing in many ways: Cohabitation is on the rise, more adults are delaying or forgoing marriage, a growing share of children are living with an unmarried parent, and same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states. Amid these changes, three-in-ten U.S. adults think it’s a good thing that there is growing variety in the types of family arrangements people live in, while about half as many (16%) say this is a bad thing. The largest share (45%) don’t think it makes a difference, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2019.

Where couples meet has changed over time

Here is longitudinal data from Stanford showing the changing places where couples have met over time: