Process of socialization and emotional background of children

Despite a number of attempts in sociology today to show the importance of study on emotions and an theoretical interpretation, empirical studies are not the rule. And, in the field of the socialization of emotions, empirical sociological studies are rarer still. After a brief reminder of certain works on the subject, this text first shows how children define their emotions globally. It then goes on to what children reveal of their emotional experience at school, putting forward a number of lines along which their words can be analyzed and giving a differential analysis of children's emotions at school and of the emotional constellation which is generated. The author invites sociologists to have a more systematic approach to emotion study.