The In-Between Places where Children are Socialized

In Between Home and School, Professor Rosenbury makes a splendid contribution to the emerging legal scholarship on the influence of cultural contexts on children's socialization. Scholars in this field have begun to study the effects on children of the media, peer relationships, civic institutions, and early caregiving environments. Professor Rosenbury's is a bold new voice in this genre offering a normative paradigm of space to replace the traditional dyadic model of state-parent authority over children. At the heart of the spatial paradigm is the view that in-between spaces socialize children in ways that differ both procedurally and substantively from the kinds of socialization that take place at home or at school. Professor Rosenbury sets out to show how "the spaces between home and school may be distinct from both home and school, rendering analogies to either concept ultimately inapposite." In this Response, I explore briefly the unstated assumptions about both the mechanisms of socialization and the substantive content of socialization that underlie her claim that the socialization of children between home and school is unique and thus deserving of special treatment in family law