A Contextual-Congruence Model of Socialization

Abstract

For more than a century, social scientists from a variety of disciplines have proposed theories of socialization to explain how values, goals, skills, and attitudes are passed from socialization agents to children. Empirical research over the last 25 years points to variations in the socialization process across families from diverse ethnic and socioeconomic groups, prompting the call for new theoretical developments that can explain these differences and expand research questions and methodologies in this area. This article presents a new approach to empirically examining socialization processes that seeks to account for these sociocultural differences, called a contextual-congruence model of socialization. The primary tenets of the model and areas to focus future empirical study are discussed.