Twins reach for each other in the womb long before anyone teaches them manners
Ultrasound studies of twin pregnancies found that from the 14th week of gestation, twin foetuses make movements aimed specifically at each other, and these contacts grow longer and more frequent as the pregnancy goes on. That finding challenges an old behaviourist idea that babies arrive with no social self at all, waiting for society to supply one.
Socialisation is how people take on the customs, values, norms and beliefs around them. It runs in both directions, learning and teaching, keeps cultures continuous across generations and continues throughout adult life. Early on the word simply meant socialising, or served as another term for socialism, before sociology adopted it. It is only part of the story, since genetic research shows environment and genotype interact in shaping behaviour.
George Herbert Mead, who lived from 1862 to 1930, argued that the self, made up of self-awareness and self-image, is absent at birth and grows through social experience. Because that experience is an exchange of symbols, we keep imagining other people's intentions. The social pre-wiring hypothesis pushes back, pointing to newborns who imitate facial gestures within hours of birth, too early for any teaching, alongside the twin studies. Its supporters describe infants as wired to be social.
Lawrence Kohlberg traced moral reasoning through stages, starting with a pre-conventional stage, typical of children, where right and wrong track pain and pleasure, followed by a conventional stage in which adolescents and adults accept society's rules. Erik Erikson mapped challenges across life: trust against mistrust in infancy, autonomy against doubt around age two, initiative against guilt in preschool, and industriousness against inferiority before adolescence.
Primary socialisation happens in the family and lays the groundwork for everything later. Secondary socialisation comes outside the home, as when school demands behaviour unlike home. Anticipatory socialisation is rehearsal for future roles; Kenneth Levine and Cynthia Hoffner found parents are the main source when it comes to careers. Resocialisation means discarding old habits for new ones, sometimes sharply, as when a young person joins the military or a convert takes on the rituals of a new faith. Organisational socialisation is how newcomers pick up an employer's history, jargon, values and procedures.
Source: Socialization
