Agency # 1. The Home or the Family:

1 -THE FAMILY

Every child is born into a family. The home or family is the first social agency with which the child comes into contact. Interactions with other members of the family, parents, siblings and others, have a lasting influence on the personality of the child and his social behaviour.

2-NEIGHBORHOOD
Every family lives in a community. This provides the base for an individual to extend social relations and interactions beyond the narrow limits of the home. This is particularly true of villages where there is much more interaction among the various families. In view of this, it is only natural that the community should PLAY an important role in influencing the process of socialisation. The neighbourhood uncles and aunties are a source of social learning.

3-THE PEER GROUP
The term peer group means the group of equals with whom a child INTERACTS. This can be a play group or a classroom group or any group of people more or less of the same age and growth level. The role of the peer group in the process of socialisation is quite significant. The peer group influence attains its highest level of influence during the teenagers.

4-SOCIAL GROUP
Social class or what we may call ‘socio-economic class’ is another FACTOR which plays a crucial role in the process of socialisation. This is natural because child rearing habits adopted by parents, vary according to the social class.

5-RELIGION
Religion is another agency which is involved in the process of socialisation, particularly in the development of values and attitudes. The reader might have come across the term ‘Protestant Ethic’, used to describe values, attitudes and orientation of certain groups of people who subscribe to the faith of Protestants. Thus the values, attitudes and orientations of the people in the U.S.A. is generally described as representing the ‘Protestant Ethic’.

6-CULTURE
Culture is a very broad term. People belonging to different RELIGIONS may share the same culture; thus we talk of an Oriental culture, SEMITIC culture, Teutonic culture etc., or perhaps for that matter even the Aryan culture. There are many things which people living in the Orient share in spite of differences among themselves, and which marks them as different from the occidental people.