Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
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Externalization,  objectivation and internalization 
Externalization is perceived as the creation of social reality that becomes real in 
the moment of human production. Society is as a human product, since human 
beings continuously produce the social world or society by their own human 
activity, this most important feature of which is the dialectal process between 
individuals and groups. Within the subsequent process of objectivation, human 
beings do not perceive the human reality as an on-going process that is formed by 
themselves, but individuals understand everyday life as a structured, present and 
permanent reality that has impact on individuals but also exists seemingly 
independent of them (Wallace and Wolf, 2006, p.288). Within the process of 
internalization, the individual takes over the world in which others already live: 
“I understand the world in which I live and that world becomes my own” (Berger 
and Luckmann, 1967, p.150). The dynamic part of internalization is that people 
not only understand each other’s definitions of their shared situations, but also 
define them reciprocally. In other words, there is an on-going mutual 
identification between people and their definitions of the world they share.   
Internalization occurs over a long period of time and is only possible through 
identification with significant others, first and foremost the parents, later teachers, 
peers, people at work, etc. (Handel, 2006, p.16). When full internalization has 
occurred, the presented norms and values exist, and are easily accessible, within 
the person himself, and so they no longer need be presented by its socializing 
agents.   
Reification 
When internalization is taken a step further it is called reification: subjectivity 
meanings seem to become objective facts. Reification means that the people 
understand products of human activity as if they were something other than 
human products, such as facts of nature, the results of cosmic laws or the 
manifestations of divine will.  Through reification people forget their own 
authorship of the human world (externalization). Roles (like the mother-role) as 
well as institutions (such as bureaucracy and laws) can be reified.  Wallace and 
Wolf (2006) explain that if an individual proclaims “I have no choice” they are 
displaying a reified lockstep mentality (p.292). 
Through the process of internalization, socialization theory assumes that even 
if people are conscious of the pressure of the norms and values in their cultural 
system, and start acting against this normative standard, they can never escape it 
(Risman, 2004). The dominant codes and beliefs (norms and values) continue to 
affect people’s behaviour and feelings of justice, since these dominant norms, 
values (or codes and beliefs) exist in a person.  
It is widely acknowledged that social influential processes are often subtle, 
indirect, and outside of awareness (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004). Ridgeway and 
Correl (2004) also emphasised that people often do not realise that their 

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Chapter 2 - Theoretical framework and hypotheses 
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behaviour is (partly) shaped by ‘other’ expectations. Though even in cases where 
individuals act alone, their actions are social-relational, in the sense that 
individuals feel their behaviour, or its consequences, will be socially evaluated, 
by approving or disapproving others (Ridgeway and Correl 2004; also Brinkgreve 
2009). For example, men and women may say that they reject the idea that 
mothers have the prime responsibility for looking after their children, and yet this 
idea may still shape their behaviour (Mason, 2000, p.241). Or, despite apparent 
inequalities in the division of labour between men and women, most women do 
not perceive them as unfair (Milkie and Peltola, 1999). Important within 
socialization theory (Berger and Luckmann, 1967) and social learning theory 
(Bandura, 1977) is thus the idea that one can produce imitative behaviour without 
considering the underlying processes. Through a process of abstract modelling 
and symbolic codes, “observers derive the principles underlying specific 
performances for generating behaviour that goes beyond that they have seen or 
heard” (Bandura, 1977, p.40). Below, I will describe this process in more detail 
(section: Theory of social learning).    
Stratification theory  
Socialization theory often has a somewhat distinct view from the literature on 
stratification or intergenerational social mobility, although both theories focus on 
the conduct of previous generations in explaining behaviour.  Stratification theory 
points to resource transfers from parents to children (Van Putten, Dijkstra and 
Schippers, 2008). What parents transmit are social statuses, more than values and 
attitudes. And subsequently, similarities in social structural position may generate 
attitudinal correspondence between parents and their offspring (Glass, Bengston, 
Dunham, 1986, p.686). Under the stratification theorem, resources can be 
distinguished between three forms of capital: human (such as skills and 
behavioural codes), social (professional social network) and financial (income 
that can be spent on means towards enhancing their children’s learning processes) 
(Van Putten et al., 2008, p.438; also Kraaykamp, 2009; Liefbroer and Dijkstra, 
2007). The resource transfers between generations will be largely mediated by the 
educational level and occupational positions of parents, as it is well-known that 
the educational level and the occupational status of the parents is a good predictor 
for their children’s education and profession (De Graaf and Ganzeboom, 1993; 
Liefbroer, 2005).
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 With her qualitative research in North America, Lareau (2007) 
                                                           
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  Another approach to studying the parental influence of adults' norms and values is known as the 
sibling design (Huijk and Liefbroer, 2012; Vries, Kalmijn and Liefbroer, 2007). At the base of this 
design lies the assumption that the strength of parental upbringing practices can be measured by 
the similarity of attitudes and behaviour among siblings. The more siblings resemble each other, 
the stronger the assumed normative and behavioural influence of their parents, which corresponds 
with socialization theory, and/or the stronger the influence of the shared social environment, since 
they grew up in the same local social environment, which is defined as the shared context 
approach (Glass et al. 1986; De Roos and Bucx, 2010) 

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