EN
Discussions within the social sciences persist in analysing the relations between parents and children chiefly from the point of view of the parent's influence on child development. But there has been a gradual change of perspective in the study of socialization since the 1970s in West Germany and since as early as the late 1950s in the USA. It was due to the sociology of youth, occupational sociology and political studies of socialization on the one hand and to a new paradigm in the theoretical assumptions of the social sciences (arising from the reception of interactionist theories of action) on the other. The new approach is to view socialization as e process of adaptation to and confrontation with the social environment that continues throughout a person's life. In the course of the process the individual acquires identification and competence to act, but as these are subject to change and are never complete, they too are best regarded as a process. These problems are presented in the article.