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:

6.  If you are in a relationship, how does this compare to where you met? 

If your parents were a couple in a relationship, where did they meet?

And this video on Youtube shows the change over time:

American and Cohabitation

From the PEW, 

Trends in Divorce

From Phil Cohen

(Legal marriage age is determined by state laws see here for more and the graphic below)

6.  What demographic is most likely to divorce according to the graphs above?  What other conclusions can make from the graphs above?

Where Americans live as adults is connected to Family as well

From The NY Times Upshot (2015), based on a U Mich study:

Americans and Interracial Marriage

From PEW: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patterns-in-intermarriage/

7.  Who is most likely to intermarry?  Is this surprising to you - why/why not? 

8.  Hypothesize why these groups may intermarry more.

 

2.05 American Culture and Cultural Values; A Critical Analysis

Action Item for our Next Lesson:

Read chapter 1 from Carolyn Deck's book, Mindset.

As we wait for students to arrive, please review the readings I assigned last class:

Kohl's Values Americans Live By

Buettner's Thrive

Remember that we were learning how humans are shaped by their society.  Culture is a strong force in nurturing who we are.  We are born into a culture and before we are even conscious, we are shaped by it.  Culture is made up of different components, but values are one of the strongest components in shaping the lives of individuals living within the culture.

Culture in general and values specifically are not always so easy to define.  Culture is dynamic, constantly evolving.  Values are very strong components of culture.  They shape so much about what we do and how our daily lives are structured.  

Sociological Studies of Values

Below are some studies of values in the U.S. identified by social scientists:

In 1970, sociologist Robin Williams published his examination of American cultural values.  

In 1985, L. Robert Kohl published a similar examination of values written for refugees like the Lost Boys so that they could adjust to American culture.  

And, in 2015 Sociologists Erik Olin Wright and Joel Rogers published American Society; How It Really Works in which they identify five core social values that most Americans affirm in one way or another: freedom, prosperity, efficiency, fairness, and democracy.

Below is a chart that synthesizes the lists of values from above. 

Look at the list of values that Americans hold (above on the left).  Identify American values that might complement each other.  These are called value clusters.  

Google Form

1. What values from the column on the left complement each other? List the values from the left side that might go together.

Sociologist Karen Cerulo explains the importance of understanding the complexity of American values in her 2008 essay here:

Values can change over time or take on increase prominence depending on the situation. Sometimes, cultures embrace different values simultaneously even though they might contradict each other.  Culture can be both ideal and real;  that is, culture can contain values that people agree are important (ideal) but they may be different from values that are actually manifest in everyday life (real). 

2. Look back to the list of American values above and identify some of the values that might contradict each other.

Thriving in America? Comparing American values to the ethnographic documentary.

Thrive by Dan Buettner is a cross-cultural ethnographic study of cultural values.  

3.  Identify values that are contradictory to U.S. values from the film God Grew Tired of Us.

4. After Identifying the values in #1 (above) that contradict what the Lost Boys value, can you connect them to some of what Buettner describes in Thrive?  What values in Thrive either support the US Values or what the Lost Boys value?

Hopefully, you see that culture can shape our lives in numerous ways - especially what we value about community, workplaces, social life, financial life, homes and our self-identity.

My goal is for you to become sociologically mindful about the ways in which culture shapes you, especially in how it leads you to be happy or not.  With sociological mindfulness, we can use research like Buettner's to consciously guide our choices to help us live happier lives.

For more on Thrive:

• Here is the Thrive happiness test- it will measure your satisfaction and make recommendations. 
• Here is a review of the book from NPR.
• You can read a preview of the book from Goodreads here. 
• Here is link to an interview with the author on NPR.
• Here is the publisher's Thrive website.

Critically Examining American culture:

State of the Nation: Cross-cultural data about life in the USA

The NY Times (2025) Wealthy and Unhappy reports on research to study "the true state of the nation."(Summarized here) The article explains that the US has both steadily grown its GDP and maintained its place as the 1st or 2nd highest GDP in the world:

But this economic dominance has not translated to other positive outcomes:

5.  What are your thoughts about the data displayed above from the State of the Nation Report?  

Pew Research Center: Cross-cultural views about American Society

What People Around the World Like – and Dislike – About American Society and Politics, PEW 2021

Look at the graph below, what stands out to you?

How Americans’ views of the U.S. compare with international views of the U.S., PEW 2023

6. What are your thoughts about the way other countries view the US compared to how Americans view their own country?

Other Links:
This link to Study USA explains American values for foreign exchange students coming to the USA:

https://www.studyusa.com/en/a/1223/six-aspects-of-u-s-culture-international-students-need-to-know

Foreigners Reveal 17 Weird Things Americans Do (That We Think Are Normal) 2020

American Themed Parties around the world:

Socimages

TikTok

This skit from SNL called Washington's Dream is a funny take on American cultural differences in weights and measurements.

Mindfulness and Values

Let's think with sociological mindfulness for a second about values.  They shape you in so many different ways. And they also shape the entire culture in certain ways.  These values lead to behaviors that we all participate in unconsciously.  These behaviors can have an enormous impact on a culture when you view them as cultural behaviors.  Watch this TED talk by Chris Jordan to see how the behaviors impact our culture:

2.04 Symbolic Culture (Gestures and Language) and Ethnicity in the US

ANNOUNCEMENT:  

ACTION ITEMS: Please read the two readings below for our next class. Both of them are about culture.  After reading them, analyze them using them using the guided questions.

Action Item 1:  Kohl's Values Americans Live By

First, the Kohl reading is about American culture.  It was written to help emigrants arriving in America adjust to cultural values that they may not be familiar with.  For Americans, the reading provides interesting insight into the culture that surrounds us.  Like fish who have never questioned water, we are engrossed in our cultural values so ubiquitously that we don't realize it.  This reading will help us take a step back and view the ways that American culture shapes those within it.  As you read, think about examples from your own life that illustrate the values Kohl highlights. 

Action Item 2:  Buettner's Thrive

Second, the Thrive reading is from a book by Dan Buettner.  Buettner travelled the world as sort of an ethnographer writing about people all over the globe.  In Thrive, Buettner focuses on the places in the world that report the highest levels of happiness.  The book focuses on a few happiness anomalies (Blue Zones) around the world: Denmark, Singapore, Mexico and San Luis Obispo (USA). This excerpt is Buettner's concluding chapter in which he tries to make sense of what the places all have in common and what we can learn from them to make our lives happier. As you read, look for areas of happiness that you had not thought about.  Make a note of things that Buettner suggests that you can do right now in your own life as well as things you want to do as you get older.

Action Item 3: Analyze and contrast the two readings using this Google Form. 

Homework  - Read these readings and answer the questions.

As we saw during our last lesson, culture is made up of different components that shape how we think and act and what we assume is normal.  Another aspect of culture is language.

Today's Lesson: 

How does symbolic culture such as gestures and language shape society?

Symbolic culture is shared meaning that involves communication such as gestures and language.  

Gestures

What are examples of the importance of gestures?

Gestures are important to understanding and communicating within a culture.  Understanding a culture's gestures can also help us avoid ethnocentrism and culture shock.  Here is a guide for international business travelers to help them understand the impact gestures can have on their interaction with other cultures.  Here is a link to a list of some single-hand gestures from around the world.

Gestures are also an example that culture is a result of shared meaning among people.  And among groups of people, meaning can change over time.  Here is a post about the Bellamy Salute, a gesture that has changed its cultural meaning over time.  Another example of the changing meaning of symbols is the ok gesture which has become associated with white supremacy/white power and it is now listed as a hate symbol by the ADL.  See this link for a detail of that evolution.

Language itself is a cultural universal and part of human nature.  But the different meanings of language shared within each culture is an example of nurture.  People learn different meanings from their language.

Answer a few Questions about language without reading ahead:

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.

1.  One of the shapes below is called a "Takete" and the other is called a "Malunga."  Take a guess which one is which:

            Shape A                    Shape B

2. Which one of the color circles below does not belong with the other two?

3. Which word does not belong or is the most different for each set below:

Set 1. Auto, turtle, basket, bird

Set 2. Laundry, beer, clothing

Set 3. A chair, a spear, a couch 

4. WHAT ARE THREE WORDS TO DESCRIBE THIS BRIDGE:

5. If you speak a language other than English, what is a word that you really like in that language?

WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE?

Language is important because it affects how we think. When we think about something, we are using language inside of our heads so if we use certain words or do not have certain words, it may affect how think about things especially how we categorize something.   We even think based on how words sound.  

For example, takete and malunga.  Takete sounds harsh and therefore angular.  Malunga sounds softer and rounded.  But these are just made up words.  

Shape A                    Shape B

Similar to takete and malanga are the words Kiki and Bouba highlighted in this 2023 NY Times article:

What is the Saphir-Whorf hypothesis?

The importance of language was first highlighted by researchers, Saphir and Whorf.  Their hypothesis and conclusion was that language shapes how people think, especially when categorizing and naming.  For example, in the color samples above, Americans typically group the chips by blue and green, but Tarahumara people do not have a word for blue and green, instead they have words that mean the color of water and the color of night.  Because each group of people have different words with different meanings, it shapes how they think.

Another example of language's effects on our thinking is a lesson from Carol Mukhopadhyay on classifying in other cultures.  For each of the following sets, choose the item that does not belong:

Set 1. Auto, turtle, basket, bird

Students generally select auto or basket using the culturally familiar categorizing device of machines vs. non-machines or and movement vs. non-movement. At least some non-western cultural groups, however, would see birds as most different because their culture emphasizes shape and birds are relatively angular rather than rounded in shape. Our culture tends to emphasize use or functionality. Thus correctness would be culture-dependent.

Set 2. Laundry, beer, clothing

Students generally, with great assurance, select beer as most different. Functionality places clothing and washing machines together. Yet, at least one culture views clothing as different because laundry and beer are both “foamy”. Visual appearance is most salient. US slang for beer (“suds”) also recognizes the attribute of foaminess.

Set 3. A chair, a spear, a couch 

Students again select the “wrong” answer—at least from the perspective of traditional West African cultures. US Americans tend to emphasize use, thus placing couch and chair together as types of sitting devices (i.e. “furniture”). Ashanti apparently would see the “couch” as the most different because both a chair and a spear can symbolize authority.

Evidence of different languages with genderized nouns shaping how people think about those things:

Lera Boroditsky, professor of cognitive science and cultural psychology has published research that concludes language affects how we think.  Her evidence is in the genderization of nouns in different cultures.  Here she is explaining her research at Ted.  Here is an explanation from NPR about Boroditsky's research and how language shapes our description of bridges.  This Psychology Today article explains more about the importance of genderizing nouns in language.  This NPR story highlights how language affects our thinking, especially for bilingual speakers.  

University of Illinois Chicago's Language Lab provides some words that students most enjoy.  Here are three from Italian:

Here is a list of untranslatable ideas about love from around the world.

  

• In Other Words is a book that highlights untranslatable words from around the world.

More evidence for the effect of language on thinking:

• The NY Times ran a story about how the idea of language affecting our thoughts. See that article here. 
  
• The ASA's Society Pages shares research by sociologist Matt Wray highlighted on NPR's Code Switch.  Why would using the term "white trash" support white supremacy?
• This New Yorker article explains the research of professor Adam Alter on the hidden power of words and naming.
• Also, here is a study explaining that without language, numbers do not make sense.
• This episode of On Being from NPR is about Rabbi Heschel who insightfully explained "words create worlds."  Here is a link to a medium article about Heschel and words.  And this link to a passage about the importance of words from Heschel to William Blake. 
• David Treuer is an Ojibway translator who explains the power and importance of language on this episode of On Being.
• The episode Lost in Translation from NPR's Hidden Brain is a social science podcast from NPR and this episode explores how language shapes our thoughts.
• Also, see this post about politics and how the use of English frames every debate especially the debate over gun violence.

EXTRA:  Cultural Diversity and Language in the US today

 

Where cultures in the US come from:

There are different types of people who are seeking to come to the U.S.

Migrant Workers - the US permits hundreds of thousands of seasonal workers to work temporarily (less than a year) in the country.

Asylum Seekers - people who are seeking asylum from oppression in another country. 

Immigrants - people who want to live in the U.S. so they file paperwork and wait for approval and then travel here. 

Refugees - people who are forced to flea due to violence or a threat of their basic needs. 

This post has a detailed and critical analysis of  immigration to the US.

General Immigration to the US:

The map below shows the country of origin (besides Mexico) where the most people were born outside of the US from 2013-20-17:  

As detailed by the Pew (2015), the number of foreign-born people living in the US reached its peak at 14.8% in 1890.  Then, it slowly declined to a historic low of 4.7% before the 1965 Immigration Act.  It wasn’t until the 1965 Act took effect that immigration began to increase until this year, 2023 when, for the first time in the history of the US, there are more than 15% of the population who are foreign-born. 

The PEW (2020) provides a snapshot of what immigration looks like in the US.  Mexico, China and India make up the vast majority of new immigrants to the US.  And, the Kaiser Family Foundation published a 2023 study about immigrants here.

 

Research the cultures/ethnicities in a locale.  

If you are from outside of Chicago:

The relative number of foreign-born people

Statista shows the US states with the highest percentage of foreign-born people living there:

What languages do we speak in the US from the Census:

From the Census, A Geographic Analysis of the Languages Spoken at Home in the US:

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2022/demo/Poster%20PAA%202022%20Language%20Geographic%20Distribution_20220323.pdf

The Migration Policy Institute provides details about who and how many immigrants are settling in different locales of the United States:

The Visual Capitalist which examines the most spoken languages besides English and Spanish in each state in the United States:

If You are From Chicago:

This graphic from Storymaps shows the most prominent languages in Chicago:

WBEZ reports on the languages in Chicago here:

Chicago Health Atlas shows the levels of  neighborhoods in Chicago that report not speaking English "very well".

7.  What are the largest immigrant groups/non-English speakers either where you are from - either in the US or in your neighborhood of Chicago?