This paper discusses the meanings of monopolization for the role of socializer, ie., child carer and also primary or nurturant socializer in the modern family, especially mothers.
In modern societies, 1) the socialization process has become more discontinuous than in that of pre-modern societies. Children have their socialization experience not in the whole societies in which they live, but in their own famillies that are formed as isolated socialization systems. 2) The mother has held the monopoly for the role of parenting. Societies have lost the mechanism of multiple parenting and also the device of social uncle. 3) Anticipatory socialization has become the main process as opposed to participatory socialization. 4) In modern societies, the purpose of socialization is for mobility, ie., upward mobility in social stratification; anticipatory socialization is suitable for mobile societies. In other words, socialization is used not for ascription, but for achievement.
As a whole, we can say that modern societies have lost their manifest function of socialization, although they have important latent or implicit effects upon socialization. Now, in contemporary societies changing toward the post-modern era, societies require us to construct a new socialization system to build a new manifest function of socialization, not monopolized by the family or by mothers, but taken by multiple socializers in broader societies as a socialization system.
