Families

Family Socialization Processes

By studying family members with different degrees of genetic relatedness (e.g., identical vs. fraternal twins), researchers have been able to show that some of the similarities among children raised in the same family are a product of their common family socialization, as traditionally assumed, but some are because children and parents share half of their genes. Because individuals' genes influence their reactions, judgments, and interpretation of experiences, children uniquely affect their parents' and siblings' behavior, and thus their parents' and siblings' influence on them in return. This research has also shown that the children in each family differ from one another partly because parents treat each child in the family as a unique individual, partly because each child interprets and responds to the same family experiences differently (e.g., younger and older children respond to divorce differently), and partly because each child has singular experiences outside the family. Thus, family environments and children's genes interact in complex ways to mold development. For example, children with a genetic history of anxiety disorders who grow up in stressful, conflict-ridden family environments are more likely to develop anxiety-related problems than children without such a family history, or than children with the same genetic propensity who grow up in more typical families.

Attachment

Socialization in the family begins with the special relationship that forms between parent and child during the first year of life, known as parent-infant attachment. In landmark studies by Harry Harlow, John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, Alan Sroufe, and their students from the 1950s through the 1970s, it became clear that children become attached to their parents not because parents feed them, as had long been thought, but because of a biologically based need for contact, comfort, and safety that is characteristic of all mammals. By the end of infants' first year of life—in every culture studied, from huntergatherer to urban industrial—they have established an intense and longlasting emotional bond with their parents and other regular caregivers that is unlike any other interpersonal bond or relationship.

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