Peer Groups
century. Peer groups consist of individuals who are not necessarily friends but who are
about the same age and of similar status. (Status refers to a recognized social position
that an individual can occupy.) Peer groups help children and
adolescents to separate from their families and to develop independent
sources of identity. They particularly influence such
lifestyle issues as appearance, social activities, and dating. In fact,
from middle childhood through adolescence, the peer group is
often the dominant socializing agent.
As you probably learned from your own experience, conflict
often exists between the values promoted by parents and those
promoted by the adolescent peer group. Issues such as tobacco,
drug, and alcohol use; hair and dress styles; political views;
music; and curfew times are likely to become points of conflict
between the generations. In contrast, adolescent peer groups are
controlled by youth, and through them, young people begin to
develop their own identities. They do this by rejecting some parental
values, experimenting with new elements of culture, and
engaging in various forms of rebellious behavior, which include
consuming alcohol and drugs and smoking cigarettes (see Table 3.1).
We don’t want to overstate the significance of adolescent–parent conflict. For one
thing, the conflict is usually temporary. Once adolescents mature, the family exerts a
more enduring influence on many important issues. Research shows that families have
more influence than do peer groups over the educational aspirations and the political,
social, and religious preferences of adolescents and college students (Davies and Kandel,
1981; Milem, 1998; Sherkat, 1998).
A second reason why we should not exaggerate the extent of adolescent–parent discord
is that peer groups are not just sources of conflict. They also help integrate young
people into the larger society.
A study of preadolescent children in a small city in the Northwest illustrates the
point. Over 8 years, sociologists Patricia and Peter Adler conducted in-depth interviews
with school children between the ages of 8 and 11. They lived in a well-todo
community composed of about 80,000 whites and 10,000 Hispanics and other
minority-
group members (Adler and Adler, 1998). In each school they visited, they
found a system of cliques arranged in a strict hierarchy, much like the arrangement of
classes and racial groups in adult society. In schools with a substantial number of Hispanics
and nonwhites, cliques were divided by race. Nonwhite and Hispanic cliques
were usually less popular than white cliques. In all schools, the most popular boys
were highly successful in competitive and aggressive achievement-oriented activities,
especially athletics. The most popular girls came from well-to-do and permissive families.
One of the main bases of their popularity was that they had the means and the
opportunity to participate in the most interesting social activities, ranging from skiing
to late-night parties. Physical attractiveness was also an important basis of girls’ popularity.
So we see that elementary school peer groups prepared these youngsters for the
class and racial inequalities of the adult world and the gender-specific criteria that
would often be used to evaluate them as adults, such as competitiveness in the case of
boys and attractiveness in the case of girls. (For more on gender socialization, see the
discussion of the mass media following in this chapter and in Chapter 9, “Sexuality
and Gender.”) What we learn from this research is that the function of peer groups
is not just to help adolescents form an independent identity by separating them from
their families. In addition, peer groups teach young people how to adapt to the ways
of the larger society.
The Mass Media
Like the school and the peer group, the mass media also became an increasingly important
socializing agent in the 20th century. The mass media include TV, radio, movies,
videos, CDs, the Internet, newspapers, magazines, and books.
The fastest-growing mass medium by far is the Internet (see Figure 3.1). However,
TV viewing still consumes more of the average American’s time than any other mass
medium. More than 98 percent of American households own a TV. On average, each
TV is turned on for seven hours a day. Survey
research shows that American adults
watched more TV every year up to the
mid-1990s, at which time Internet started
eating into TV viewing hours, especially
among more highly educated Americans.
Heavy watchers of TV are concentrated
among socially disadvantaged groups, and
that trend is intensifying over time (Hao,
1994; Robinson and Bianchi, 1997; see
Table 3.2).
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