Feral children are children who have been raised in isolation. Studies of such children show that the absence of parental love and nurturance damages the individual's ability to become a social being. Studies which compare children reared in orphanages with those reared in traditional families show that the former are more likely to develop emotional problems. Harry Harlow showed that infant monkeys reared apart form other monkeys grew up to be aggressive, violent and incapable of nurturing their own infants. George Herbert Mead believed that the self could emerge only through the use of language.
Culture therefore is at the center of the information of the self.
Jean Piaget studied children's notions of morality. Lawrence Kohlberg built on Piaget's research in devising his theory of stages of moral development in children. Agencies of socialization are the groups of people, along with the interactions that occur within those groups, that influence a person's social development. Within these agencies one finds a great deal of anticipatory socialization , in which the individual plays a role that he or she is likely to assume later in life. The family is the primary agency of socialization.