I can answer as to American (non-indigenous) whaling communities. That was the "commercial" whalefishery. I'll talk about the practice of blue-water whale hunting, as distinguished from coastal whaling. (In coastal whaling, a town has a lookout tower, and when a whale is spotted, whaleboats row out from shore to hunt it. As you have to wait for the whales to come to you, it's not really a full-time occupation; it was just a part of a fishing community's production.)

Blue water whaling is what most people think of when they think about whaling- sailing ships out in the open ocean, taking voyages that lasted for literally years, launching small boats that would row to catch whales hundreds of miles from shore; the commercial goal is whales, not other fishing.

As whaling developed from a sideline for fishermen into a stand-alone industry at the end of the eighteenth century, some towns specialized in whaling. The most important one was New Bedford, followed by Nantucket and New London, all in Massachusetts. The overwhelming majority of American whaling voyages left from those few cities, so generally American whalemen either were born in one of the whaling towns or they went there to get work.

Career training started with basic boating and nautical skills, which were (and still are) ubiquitous in fishing towns. Kids rowed and sailed around the harbor and coastline in cat boats and other small craft, either in groups or solo. They learned knots from repairing nets and tackle (a typical children's task) and learned weather from observation and conversation with adults. They would receive the typical schooling of a New Englander (reading, arithmetic, history, religion) but their early nautical education was not formal. That is, they weren't being given sailing lessons, they were learning from observing adults and older children in the basic skills of seamanship as well as their own "messing around in boats".

Children of ship's officers, or particularly bright children in general, could receive additional formal education needed to become officers themselves someday. This was mostly the specialized mathematics necessary to calculate a ship's position based on solar and celestial observations while at sea. They also might receive basic instruction in accounting. Such additional training was either part of an apprenticeship to a ship's captain, or at a navigation school ashore. Such schools were not buildings; rather a few students would come to their teacher's house for a few hours a day. Teachers were typically either officers wives or retired officers. In the later nineteenth century some formal schools of navigation were opened, but by that time the whaling industry was in decline, so many of those students were probably expecting careers in shipping or the military, not whaling.

(I should clarify: when I refer to a ship's officer, I don't mean a military naval officer like an ensign or a lieutenant. Every commercial ship would have at least a captain or master, a mate, a second mate, and usually a third mate. They were responsible for navigating the ship and commanding the crew, taking it in turns.)

For future officers or just ordinary hands, the next step was a first sea voyage, typically done no younger than sixteen years old, and more commonly at seventeen or eighteen. A promising future officer might be hired as a "boy" a few years younger, but even they were typically fourteen or fifteen, according to the ship's papers. These weren't the "cabin boys" of the British and American navies that were largely servants to the officers; a whaling ship's "boy" was a mate in training, expected to stand watches and participate in the navigation. A sailor on his first voyage was a "green hand" and was taught by example, with the ordinary seaman literally "showing him the ropes" and teaching him what needed to be done. The ship's officers might also provide instruction, if they were so inclined. A single successful voyage was sufficient to graduate a "green hand" into an "ordinary seaman", but bear in mind that a short voyage might last an entire year, while a long voyage could be up to five years long.

So that's education. Now, to society. As noted, there were specific "whaling towns" where most whaling voyages originated. As might be expected, whaling was thus central to the town's identity. Churches were sponsored by successful whaling captains and especially ship owners, and memorial plaques were installed inside the churches in memory of those lost at sea. Those can still be seen today. There are many recorded sermons regarding whaling, especially with reference to the Book of Jonah. A specialist in New England religious history would be able to say more if there was an unusual fixation on Jonah in the whaling towns; but one expects any preacher to spend time on the professional and commercial interests of his parishioners.

The family as an economic unit was also centralized around whaling. With voyages lasting for years, income was obviously sporadic, so the town's economy ran on credit to an even greater extent than was typical in cash-starved New England. Families would buy necessities "on account", and the debts would be settled when head-of-household's ship finally made it back to port and the whalers were paid by the ship owners. The wife would usually seek some income on the side; noted above were women that trained future officers, but they also did all the other income-gaining tasks of New Englanders of the time period. And while the main income of the towns was whaling, they also had small fishing fleets, and older children could earn a little money by fishing.

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Sources:

• Norling, Lisa Captain Ahab Had a Wife (This exactly fits your interest, as it is all about the shore life of whaling families)

• Busch, Briton Cooper Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century

• Dolin, Eric Jay Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America