Microsoft Word Socialized Choices 31-12 pod docx

Socialized Choices - Labour Market Behaviour of Dutch Mothers 
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to behave accordingly at their grandparents’ place, the child apprehends that 
different types of behaviour (formal and informal) are required in different social 
settings. The symbolic signs that are associated with the behaviour, for example, 
in the case of visiting their grandparents, drinking tea with a cup and saucer, helps 
to remind the person how to act in specific situations and also in other 
comparable (Bandura, 1977, p.25).  
According to Bandura it is important to understand that many skills, 
competencies and appropriate behaviours are learned observationally, since often 
they cannot easily or immediately be established by overt enactment, due either to 
social prohibitions, lack of opportunity or physical ability. For example, a young 
child learns to associate drinking alcohol with festivities or just the end of a 
working day, but is not yet allowed to drink himself. When the association is 
firmly built and stored in memory, only observing the association will be strong 
enough to recall the ‘learned’ behaviour, which will happen without intention or 
attention. Labour market behaviour is pre-eminently behaviour that one must, via 
delayed constructions, visualise and rehearse with verbal symbols. Possible 
mental and verbal symbols associated with work (either paid or unpaid) that 
parents have intentionally or unintentionally ‘taught’ their children are, for 
example, money, joy, obligation, status, the father, freedom, creativity, boredom 
and fatigue.  
As mentioned earlier, primary socialization involves much more than purely 
cognitive learning, especially since it takes place under circumstances that are 
emotionally charged. The child identifies with the significant others in a variety 
of emotional ways. Whatever they may be, internalization occurs only as 
identification occurs. And especially during the process of primary socialization, 
there is often no problem of identification, since there are no significant others 
apart from the parents or other caretakers.
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 It is the parents (or caretakers) who 
set the rules of the game. “The child can play the game with enthusiasm or with 
sullen resistance. But, alas, there is no other game around. Since the child has no 
choice in the selection of his significant others, his identification with them is 
quasi-automatic and quasi-inevitable. The child does not internalize the world of 
his significant others as one of many possible worlds. He internalizes it as the 
world, the only existent and only conceivable world, the world tout court” 
(Berger and Luckmann, 1967, p.154). 
Primary socialization ends when the concept of the generalised other has been 
established in the consciousness of the individual. At this point he or she is an 
effective member of society. Yet, socialization is never finished. Although, the 
objective reality as it is internalised in primary socialization is often maintained, 
it often admits, outside of individuals’ own awareness, to further internalizations 
– or secondary socialization – taking place in the later life of the individual. 
                                                           
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  There are at present many children growing up with more than one or two caretakers which whom 
they can identify emotionally. Moreover, a child may identify emotionally more with another 
parent or caretaker than the one who the child interacts with most frequently. 

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Chapter 2 - Theoretical framework and hypotheses 
67 
Within the context of this study, it is important to describe the process of 
secondary socialization as gender socialization – that of how boys learn to be 
boys and girls learn to be girls – since this is also of primary interest. 
“Socialization is the force which defines and establishes gender, the social 
construction of male and female, in a society” (Eagle, 1988, p.69). 
Gender socialization 
Socialization theory also provides us with an explanation of how and why gender-
specific labour market trajectories persist. Parental influence on adults’ behaviour 
and attitudes seems especially manifest in the process of gender socialization. 
Culturally defined (gender) roles are taught, meaning that children learn to 
distinguish female and male role expectations from an early age (Ampofo, 2001). 
The way gender is acquired, is a complete process and few of the mechanisms 
concerned can be identified as put-up or manipulated. Parents, grandparents and 
other adults, together with siblings and their friends in various ways, often subtly 
and unintentionally play a role in the construction of gender (Mason, 2000, 
p.240). Mothers and fathers act as role models regarding the division of labour: 
adolescents tend to see the way in which their own parents divide responsibilities 
as a model for their own future division of labour (De Valk, 2008). Yet, children 
do not automatically mimic the parental behaviour. Implicit messages and 
feelings about the division of labour also are picked up by their offspring, for 
example, if the mother is employed, but only does so out of economic necessity, 
and does not enjoy it. Alternatively, the mother may not work, but she dislikes 
her mother-role and would rather have made a career. For this reason I consider 
the transmissions of attitudes, norms and values – besides parental role modelling 
– to be of particular interest while investigating the process of socialization 
Not many empirical studies have addressed the influence of parental 
socialization on adults’ attitudes. Nonetheless, Strauss (1969) already stated that 
intra-familial continuity is likely to become more apparent as the younger 
generation moves into full adult status, which includes major life transitions such 
as marriage, parenthood and occupation (in Inman-Amos, Hendrick and 
Hendrick, 1994, p.460; also Ryan, 2001). Although parents might no longer be 
able to impose normative standards on their adult children, eventually the 
younger generation’s behaviour as adults is patterned according to the conduct of 
their parents, as is for example argued by Biddle et al. (1980, p.1072), based on 
their study among 149 adolescents living in North America.  Kossek and Lambert 
(2005) also showed how people change their identity once they become parents, 
and use their childhood experiences, as well as examples of other parents in their 
social context, while taking on their new role. Several studies have demonstrated 
for example that the division of labour becomes more traditional across the 
transition into parenthood, with wives increasing their share of family work and 
decreasing their paid work hours (Kluwer, Heesink and Van Vliert, 2002, p.939). 

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