Language is a gendered system that reflects male experience and expressions and the categories used in traditional sociological inquiry are often incongruent with the experiences of women's lives (Devault 1990;. Long /987; Keller 1985; Smith /979). An examination of 32 abused women's narratives of violence from their intimate partners demonstrates that words for the content oftheir experiences were readily a~cessible. Women's articulations of the interactional meanings of the Violence, however, indicated vocabularies insufficient ;v describe the effects. I examine how abused women's reports of naming and use of language shape meaning and consequent actions. J argue that a gendered language system poses obstacles to the constructions and expressions of these meanings. Lan~uage is the quintessential embodiment of human experience. It is the most SOCial .of all human phenomena anchoring and articulating everything from sex.ual relations and family intimacy to the war plans and peace negotiations of nation-states (Boden 1991:848). Language is not merely a passive form of communi.cation (~odd and .Fisher 1988), but an active force shaping the constructions and interpretations of experience. It defines, mirrors, and thus sustains social order. Language and the power to name are vital in both social control and knowledge construction processes. It is through language and naming that actors create th~ir own realities and that phenomena are made "real," Evelyn Fox Keller (198?), for example, discussed the power of language and naming in science. By naming nature, by creating theories and models which constructed and defined natur~,. sci~ntists transformed the unknown into the known. DuBois' (1983:) 08) amplifications of naming processes suggested that what was left unnamed in society as in science, became non-existent, as its reality was not confirmed: ' A.u!hor's Note: I would like to thank my writer's group colleagues Petra Liljestrand, Theresa Montini, and Patricia Flynn for comments and criticisms on very early drafts, and to Adele Clarke for insightful comments at several stages. I am grateful to the detailed and substantive comments of anonymous reviewers and WiJliam J. Swart, Managing Editor.

Current findings on parental influences provide more sophisticated and less deterministic explanations than did earlier theory and research on parenting. Contemporary research approaches include (a) behavior-genetic designs, augmented with direct measures of potential environmental influences; (b) studies distinguishing among children with different genetically influenced predispositions in terms of their responses to different environmental conditions; (c) experimental and quasi-experimental studies of change in children's behavior as a result of their exposure to parents' behavior, after controlling for children's initial characteristics; and (d) research on interactions between parenting and nonfamilial environmental influences and contexts, illustrating contemporary concern with influences beyond the parent-child dyad. These approaches indicate that parental influences on child development are neither as unambiguous as earlier researchers suggested nor as insubstantial as current critics claim.

The history of research on childhood socialization in the context of the family is traced through the present century. The 2 major early theories-behaviorism and psychoanalytic theory-are described. These theories declined in mid-century, under the impact of failures to find empirical support. Simple reinforcement theory was seriously weakened by work on developmental psycholinguistics, attachment, modeling, and altruism. The field turned to more domain-specific minitheories. The advent of microanalytic analyses of parent-child interaction focused attention on bidirectional processes. Views about the nature of identification and its role in socialization underwent profound change. The role of "parent as teacher" was reconceptualized (with strong influence from Vygotskian thinking). There has been increasing emphasis on the role of emotions and mutual cognitions in establishing the meaning of parent-child exchanges. The enormous asymmetry in power and competence between adults and children implies that the parent-child relationship must have a unique role in childhood socialization.

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In the years between preschool and puberty, the free play of children occurs largely in sex-segregated groups. Some differences in the socialization setting provided by all-boy and all-girl playgroups are described, and possible reasons for children's tendency to congregate in same-sex groups are explored. This article suggests that sex-differentiated play styles and modes of exerting peer influence are important factors. Three classes of possible explanatory processes are considered: biological factors, socialization pressures from adults, and gender cognitions. The article claims that "masculinity" and "femininity," as dimensions of individual differences, may not be linked to preference for same-sex playmates, and that these two aspects of sex-typing require different explanations. Segregation is depicted as a group phenomenon, essentially unrelated to the individual attributes of the children who make up all-girl or all-boy groups. Concepts of gender identity and core categorical membership are seen as the primary cognitive underpinnings for segregation.