The Influence Of Socialization In Education

Like most nineties kids, I grew up in a pretty heavily gendered environment. However, while I embraced a slightly tomboy attitude and rejected a fair amount of what was considered “girly” until my high school years, my socialization still resulted in a heavy amount of interdependence and, eventually, some pretty extreme anxiety when it came to how I was being perceived by those around me. The stereotypes and the reinforcing of gendered behavior that I have encountered in my life have, in some ways, negatively impacted my sense of self-confidence and self-efficacy. As such, one of the personal goals I have worked towards in recent years is that of bolstering my sense of self worth by being more conscious of and proactive about situations where

Where boys are seen as and encouraged to be more assertive, young girls are expected to be more gentle and obedient. According to research, these assumptions tend to produce lower senses of self-esteem and of self-confidence, particularly in their formative years (Kerbo, p. 295-297). In the film “People Like Us: Social Class in America”, a similar idea is brought forward in the section “Most Likely to Succeed”. In this section, the narrator states that socialization occurs on a daily basis, and starts at a very young age. These, presumably, are the years Kerbo is speaking of where the loss of self-esteem tends to occur. When I was younger, I spoke up in classes fairly frequently, and viewed these interactions as positive experiences and ways to build a relationship with an adult I respected. However, as I continued through my education, I spoke up less frequently in classes when I didn’t fully understand a concept. Particularly in math, I grew increasingly humiliated that I had trouble getting through multiplication tables, and hated hearing the words “dumb blonde” directed at me by my classmates. However, similar questions from blond male classmates didn’t seem to warrant the same

In particular, infant dependency forced mothers and women to attend to childcare, and thus limited the variety of opportunities and access to different experiences for women in general (Kerbo, p. 65). While it has become more acceptable in the United States for women to choose to focus on aspects of life other than childcare in recent decades, there still seem to be a number of women electing to leave the workforce in order to devote their time to raising their families. In one case, a classmate in a sociology course last semester turned to me after filling out a survey in which we were asked to indicate how we felt about mothers electing to stay in or leave the professional world in order to raise their children. While she was actively pursuing a degree at Virginia Tech, she admitted that her efforts were “only until I find a husband,” and that she “would never even think about going back to work” after having a child, because it would be wrong to let someone else, like a daycare provider or a nanny, be the one to wind up raising your child. While I can understand my classmate’s feelings, I also believe that her attitude passes and perpetuates judgment on those women who, for economic or personal reasons, return to work after giving birth, or decide not to have children at