Culture and socialization are the two main entities that help shape our identity. The culture we grow up in as a child and the people we come into contact with in everyday life can all be classified as encounters we have with socialization. As young children entering this world, we imitate those close to us and behaviors begin to form. It is through this imitation that we also discover that we express our emotions. These characteristics are ingrained in us from a young age and represent the main basic building blocks that help us develop our individual identities. What we come to see in our daily lives and in regular interaction with other people has a much greater influence on us, particularly during our youth, when we are constantly learning about our culture, our environment and the people involved regularly in our lives. Ken Plummer also highlights the great necessity and importance of this for a young child in early socialization and the negative effects an unsocialized individual can face. Our parents teach us actions that are acceptable in society, these behaviors often become habits and dictate how we behave and communicate with others. The mother or guardian and child bond is particularly strong and therefore from birth the child learns to imitate the mother, this is the earliest and most consistent socialization he receives and therefore is the most important. The words of Kim Atkins come to mind when she highlights the importance of the mother/child bond: “human beings are literally born through the bodies of our other humans, and our survival depends on the most intimate human interactions.” (Narrative Identity and Moral Identity: A Practical Perspective, Kim... middle of paper... would not develop into the social beings we are meant to be and that society actually asks us to be. While structures influence us, they are not the main “building blocks” needed to develop as socially functional individual identities Bibliography Plummer, K 2010, Sociology: The Basics, Routledge, New YorkBlack, L, Bennet, A, Edles, LD, Gibson, M, Inglis, D, Jacobs, R & Woodward, I 2012, Cultural sociology: an introduction, Wildey-Blackwell, Chichester, West SussexAtkins, K 2008, Narrative identity and moral identity: a practical perspective, Routledge, New York Calhoun, C, Gerteis, J, Moody, J, Pfaff, S, & Virk, I 2002, Contemporary Sociological Theory, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Malden, Massachusetts Lemert, C 2011, Social Things: An Introduction to the Sociological Life, Fifth edition, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, Lanham, Maryland