4.3 Stages of Socialization

Frame each stage as a role-biography, and use the Nepali rites of passage as your runningexample — that pairing is what lifts an answer.1. Infancy — attachment, language acquisition, the looking-glass self begins; Nepali rites: birth purification (nwaran, naming on the ninth day).2. Childhood — Mead's play stage; learning gender and caste rules; rites: first rice-feeding (pasni), head-shaving (chuadar/niskan by community).3. Adolescence — the turbulent stage: identity crisis (Erikson), peer dominance, sex-role intensification; Nepali rites: bratabandha (sacred-thread ceremony) for hill Hindu boys; for Newar girls, barha tayegu/gufa (the bel-marriage and ritual seclusion — a striking instance of socialization being ritualised); today's complication — adolescent life increasingly happens on the smartphone, with cyber-bullying and body-image as new socialization pressures.4. Adulthood — the long plateau: multiple, stable role sets (spouse, parent, worker, citizen); marriage as the classic rite of entry; for professionals, the second socialization into careers (the advocate's oath).5. Old age — role loss rather than gain: retirement, widowhood, "empty nest"; theories: disengagement vs activity (stay engaged — the supported view); the Nepali problem: with the young abroad, "left-behind" elderly in remittance villages; the old-age social-security allowance and the Senior Citizens Act 2063 (2006) as the state's answer — the state itself as socialization agent for filial duty's decline.