Dialectical Models of Socialization

Abstract

Abstract Despite contemporary acceptance that children are active agents in their own socialization, that causality between parents and children is bidirectional, and that context matters, basic concepts used in socialization research continue to reflect an underlying mechanistic ontology. In this chapter we propose that a dialectical relational systems conception of the transaction model provides direction for future advances in the study of dynamic parent‐child socialization processes with an emphasis of intergenerational change, not only continuity. The chapter begins by exploring dialectics as a framework underlying an organismic‐contextual meta‐theory for understanding the transactional model of human development. The chapter then outlines social relational theory as a framework for translating four assumptions of a dialectical ontology including agency, holism, contradiction, and synthesis to reformulate major transactional processes in parent‐child relations and socialization. The chapter ends by considering implications for application and methodology informed by dialectics.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 143 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.