SOC3421W - Week 5

Key terms:

• Life Cycle sequence: The ordering of the roles from infancy to death: roles, norms, problems

• Socialization: Process of learning norms, roles, and skills

• Informal socialization: Process of learning in the family and among peers

• Formal socialization: Process of learning in school

General notes:

I. Life Cycle Perspective

• Individual life cycle: family → school → transition to work → work → retirement

• Career: Entry-level job → job change → retirement

  • Types of job careers can shape one’s personality

• Family life cycle: formation → birth of first child → departure of last child from home → retirement from work → death of one spouse

II. Socialization and work

• Parents as socializing agents

• Informal → language, basic living skills, values, norms, habits, attitudes

  • Parents vary by background

• Formal → Curriculum, extracurriculars, and hidden curriculum

  • School context

• Socialization in the workplace → on-job training, work ethics social values, and social relationships

III. Entering the Labor Force

• Occupation choice - what factors are influential

  • Ask this in your essay

• Barriers to entry…

  • Types of education

  • School reputation Personal aspiration

  • Skills

  • Networks of contact, family background, chance

• Dead-end jobs → little skill, low pay, few benefits, no promotion, less responsibility, high turnover

• Entry port jobs → Skill training, greater responsibility, improved pay & fringe benefits, promotion

  • Formalized recruitment procedures

• Job ladder in corporations→ internal labor markets, internal competition, regulations, corporate cultures, wage growth patterns

IV. Role conflict & role overload

• Role conflict - 2 possible conflict

  • Entering the labor force and completing school simultaneously

  • Leaving home & starting a new family

• Role overload - too much to do at the same time, which causes lower satisfaction and depression

• For women → Btw work and family, double burdens, responsibility for children & parents, career development, social worlds…

• Single mother family → female-headed households increased from 10% (1970) to 18% (2009) to 22% (2015) to 22.6% (2019)

V. Between family and work

• Work arrangements among couples → dual careers

  • Time arrangements

  • Location arrangements

  • Priorities

  • Commuter marriage

• Integration and segmentation of work and home to offset negative impacts

  • Calendar, keys, clothe/appearance

  • Eating and drinking, money

  • Talk, reading, breaks

  • Commuters, phone calls

• The sandwich generation: middle-aged workers between aging parents and small children

VI. Integration of Work and Family

• Repackaging jobs

  • Felxibiloty

  • Block schedulonig

  • Work sahring

VII. Guiding questions fo rQuiz #5

• Terms:

  • Sequential life span

  • Family cyc;e

  • rle conflcit

  • sandwich generation

  • occupartional choice

  • job career

  • entry-port job

  • dead-end job

• Things lerned form socialization relevant to work

  • Values

  • Norms

  • Knowledhe

  • Skills

• How to dscribe dead-end and entry port jobs in terms of skil, pay , benefits etc.

• x