Institutional and cultural influences on child growth and behavior.

Abstract

Although the family is the primary socializing agency in the life of the young preschool child, it is not long before he is subjected to the push and pull of the general culture, of the neighborhood sub-culture, and of the institutions especially designed by all parents to extend their socialization efforts. The young child plays with other children in his neighborhood and receives various rewards and punishments from them (and their parents), all consistent with the general values of the social-racial-religious sub-cultures thereby represented. He attends a church of his parents' choice and is exposed to its moral-ethical-social precepts and promises of future rewards and punishments. When he reaches his fifth birthday he begins the long journey through the varied experiences of formal schooling which will bring him into close interaction with the varied personalities of a succession of teachers and of many boys and girls from different home backgrounds. These latter years will also include a heterogeneous series of formal and informal group memberships, and a continuous exposure to the positive and negative reinforcements of the general culture in which he is being reared.These are some of the major sources of social influence on the child's psychological growth and behavior tendencies. In a few instances the sources of social influence are relatively homogeneous in defining the "good life" and in providing consistent patterns of reinforcement that are directed toward these goals -for example, the small bands of Hutterites and house Amish who have effectively isolated their children from social impacts of the broader culture. However, in most instances the growing child is subjected to a fairly heterogeneous series of rewards and punishments that are often in conflict with each other. Behaviors that elicit approval from his 661