ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the types of interaction that take place within the carpool setting both between children and adults and among peer group members. It discusses the behavioral patterns and roles that commonly emerge in this setting and describes their impact on the developing child. The chapter also describes three carpool-generated relationships: intimate, combatant, and obligatory. A feature of carpooling that promoted easier interaction between adults and children, facilitating their ability to get along with and learn from each other, was the basic value and norm consensus. Carpool interaction often produced the most noticeable socializing influences on first and only children who had little previous exposure to older peers, partly because parents of first and only children tended to be more overprotective, more sensitive to their children's experiences, and more aware of subtle changes in their character. Children placed in carpools with disliked others displayed regular patterns of hostility, which increased in intensity because of their forced contact.
