Community's Role: Shaping Child Socialization and Development

This essay delves into the crucial role the community plays in a child's socialization, highlighting that upbringing extends beyond parental influence to encompass societal norms and expectations. It emphasizes how parenting styles are shaped by the community's ideals, aiming to ensure the child's acceptance within the broader social context, including family and extended relations. The essay applies the socialization theory of acculturation, focusing on how children are made aware of societal norms and appropriate social behavior. It further discusses the family as the primary level of socialization, with relatives, neighbors, and schools also contributing significantly to the child's development. Ultimately, the essay underscores that successful socialization, heavily influenced by the community, is essential for a child's well-being and ease of integration into the wider world, thus supporting the saying that 'it takes a community to raise a child.'

Running head: COMMUNITY AND THE CHILD
COMMUNITY AND THE CHILD
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1COMMUNITY AND THE CHILD
“It takes a community to raise a child,” this particular saying hints at the fact that the
socialization of a child is not just a matter of the parents and the child only, as the upbringing
cannot escape the overarching influence of the society and its ideals. The parenting style which is
involved in the upbringing of a child cannot be devoid of the societal underpinnings as the
process of socialization is oriented towards ensuring that the child conforms to the norms and
customs of the society without deviating from them as that would bring about untoward
consequences for the child (Bell, 2017). The parents ensure that the child grows up to act like the
way the society expects an individual to act which shows that the influence of the society in
determining the role of the parents and the parenting style is profound (Boldt, Kochanska &
Jonas, 2017). It is the aspiration of every parent to ensure that their child grows up to be like by
all and hence the parents ensure that they provide the socialization to their children which shall
make their child acceptable by all the members of the society and also within the family circle
consisting of close family members and also the members of the extended family alike
(Kochanska, 2017). Thus the socialization theory of acculturation is applicable in this aspect, as
the aspect of socialization which this essay deals with is concerned with making the children
aware of the ways of the world and the ideal way of acting in a social collectivity. There is
another very vital factor which determines the role of the parents and the parenting style to be
adopted under the influence of the society is the fact that the family is the primary level of
socialization and the process of socialization does not limit itself to just the primary socialization
and the parents are not the only ones who are in charge of providing care to the child, there are
relatives, neighbours, the school all of whom play a crucial role in the acceptability of the child,
and the socialization of the child, hence the parents must ensure that the socialization of the child
happens in a way which would not just make the child acceptable to the society but also to

2COMMUNITY AND THE CHILD
ensure that the child is acts in a way which is acceptable socially (Goldberg & Smith, 2016). The
child grows up and eventually ventures out in the society which makes the agents of socialization
broader and more impersonal than the circle consisting of the close family. Hence in order to
face the greater world and its challenges, it is important that the child is socialized in a way
which is highly influenced by the society and that is done to benefit the child, and also makes the
life of the child easier in the society relatively (Dorsch, Smith & McDonough, 2015). Hence this
proves the saying that it takes a community to raise a child since parents are not the only agents
of socialization, the society is more important than the personal predispositions of the children.

3COMMUNITY AND THE CHILD
References
Bell, R. Q. (2017). A reinterpretation of the direction of effects in studies of socialization. In
Interpersonal Development (pp. 93-107). Routledge.
Boldt, L. J., Kochanska, G., & Jonas, K. (2017). Infant attachment moderates paths from early
negativity to preadolescent outcomes for children and parents. Child development, 88(2),
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Dorsch, T. E., Smith, A. L., & McDonough, M. H. (2015). Early socialization of parents through
organized youth sport. Sport, exercise, and performance psychology, 4(1), 3.
Goldberg, A. E., & Smith, J. Z. (2016). Predictors of race, adoption, and sexual orientation
related socialization of adoptive parents of young children. Journal of Family
Psychology, 30(3), 397.
Kochanska, G. (2017). Mutually responsive orientation between mothers and their young
children: Implications for early socialization. In Interpersonal Development (pp. 141-
159). Routledge.