HIS paper will consider the relationship between the occupational T role of the middle-class male and his aims and concerns in the socialization of his children. The approach is deliberately one-sided. We will deal almost entirely with fathers, and scarcely at all with mothers, and we will high-light other aspects of the socialization process a t the expense of such matters as feeding practices, toilet training and sexual training.' There is no intention of denying the worth of approaches other than that exemplified here. We wish only to stress what seem to be neglected, though obvious and common-sense aspects of the question of socialization. APPROACHES TO THE QUESTION OF SOCIALIZATIONWe will define socialization for the purpose at hand as the process of inculcating in individuals the skills, traits and value attitudes associated with the performance of present or anticipatedThere are a number of ways of stating problems concerning socialization. One approach is to ask what are the eJects of certain types of socialization experience. Considerable strides have been made along these lines, in analyzing, for example, the effects of "basic disciplines" such as weaning, toilet training and sexual

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Experience, not design, first confronted me with contrasts in the roles of clergymen, teachers, and psychiatrists. On second thoughts these contrasts seemed theoretically important. Their importance will here be assessed on the basis of a tradition of developing thought that as such must, however, be taken for granted. Still, the concrete observations from which this essay takes its departure, as well as the conditions under which they were made and initially interpreted, need prior attention. Subsequently various theoretical proposals will then have their proper balance in material that at best can illustrate them. Rigorous assessment must, as usual, come later still.For four years I was on the staff of “a mental health project,” called the Human Relations Service, as a sociologist. It was the intention of this project to extend the traditional patterns of psychiatric practice and to gather relevant knowledge about matters of emotional balance to be found in a town of 20 thousand fairly well-to-do people in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The staff of the project included psychiatrists, a psychiatric social worker, clinical psychologists, and various social scientists. Administratively the H.R.S. was linked with the community through an executive committee the chairman of which was the local Unitarian minister. The project, in other words, was committed to research as well as service, including short-term psychotherapy.

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