SOCIAL NORMS
Society and culture play a huge role in determining how social norms are formed and enforced. Social norms are rules that act as an informal social guide to regulate behavior and are commonly based on and enforced through social consent. Social norms are at the root of social order, helping to maintain that people will follow what is considered proper conduct within their society.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Kurt Lewin was a pioneer in the study of social norms and looked at experimental research involving leadership and work ethic between school-aged children. Lewin advocated that children’s environments were most important for learning and proposed that both inherent inclinations and life experiences play crucial roles in defining each person.
Talcott Parsons championed for sociology’s expansion in the academic community and also wanted to integrate all the social sciences into one theoretical framework based on a single theory that the assumption that human action is voluntary, intentional, and symbolic. Parsons believed that people conformed with social norms because they truly wanted to acquiesce to what society dictates.
On the other hand, Francesca Cancian, a sociology professor and author of books such as What Are Norms?, concluded that people conformed to norms to validate identity and to exhibit to themselves and others what kind of person they are.
Studies going back from the late 1950s through the present show that children and adolescents today are paying much less attention to social conventions than they did years ago. General politeness and making good impressions seem to be less important to today’s children compared to earlier generations. Public Agenda, a non-profit research group, discovered in a 2002 survey that only an astonishing nine percent of adults believe that children they see in public are “respectful towards adults.”
Changes in demography, law, social policy and family structure as well as globalization and marginalization along with several other elements are responsible for dictating social norms and reshaping people’s behaviors today. Technological innovations such as television, media, cell phones, computers and the internet have also brought about major change not only in the way society communicates but in the barrage of information that we are faced with and process on a daily basis.
These changes effect how children adapt in the world as adults and can also change the norms that are accepted in society. But social norms are constantly being challenged and as society changes so does its consideration for what is socially acceptable. As George Orwell once said, "society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice."
But it is ultimately up to parents and schoolteachers to teach children the proper values needed not just to adhere to social norms but to question them as well. Teaching children to be skeptical of what they see and experience is giving them an opportunity for a balanced view of life so that the children of the world will not just fit into society and culture but excel in it.