Q.Why is the family regarded as the most important agency of socialisation in a person's early life?

Primary socialisation is the term for the earliest and most intensive phase of learning to become a member of society -- the phase that happens mainly, though not exclusively, within the family during early childhood. It is distinguished from secondary socialisation, which refers to the learning that continues afterwards, throughout the rest of a person's life, mostly through institutions such as school, the workplace, and other social settings encountered later.

The family holds a uniquely important place in this early phase for several reasons that reinforce one another. First, an infant is entirely dependent on the family for survival, which makes the family the first and most continuous source of contact and learning a child has, well before school or peer groups enter the picture. Second, it is within the family that a child first absorbs language, basic norms of behaviour, and an initial sense of the roles (son, daughter, sibling) they are expected to occupy -- the foundational material that later, secondary socialisation builds on rather than starts from scratch. Third, in most traditional societies, the family a child is born into also fixes much of that child's social position for the rest of their life -- their caste, kin group, region and, often, economic prospects are all transmitted through family membership, so the fam …