Author Description

Readings in Child Socialization reviews some of the most important findings in child socialization and covers topics ranging from achievement motivation and parental behavior to maternal retrospection, mother-infant interaction, and children's attitudes to theft. Interaction in families with a schizophrenic child is also explored, along with identification and imitation in children; the taking of adult roles in middle childhood; social origins of elaborated and restricted codes; and the problem of identification with the father. This book is comprised of 14 chapters and opens by discussing three currents of thought that stimulated the empirical investigation of socialization: the learning approach, the positivist tradition, and Sigmund Freud's ideas. The following chapters explore the child's learning of adult role behavior; the role of parents in the child's achievement motivation; and the effects of sex of the dominant parent on sex-role preference, identification, and imitation in children. The influence of marital integration on parent-child relations is also examined, along with the direction of effects in studies of socialization. This monograph will be a useful resource for sociologists, social scientists, and child psychologists.