Chapter 7: FRIENDSHIPS ACROSS THE LIFE CYCLE
Friendship
is a “voluntary, personal relationship, typically providing intimacy and
assistance, in which the two parties like one another and seek each other’s
company,” (Fehr, 1996).
Without friendship life is not worth
living. Cicero
Friendship is the only cement that will ever
hold the world together. Woodrow
Wilson
Each friend represents a world in us, a
world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that
a new world is born. Anais Nin
A friend in need is a friend to be avoided. Anonymous
I don’t trust him. We’re friends. Bertolt
Brecht
The Nature of Friendships
•
Researchers have tried
to delineate the properties of friendship.
•
Davis & Todd (1985)
identified 15 to 20 typical features of friendships
•
Sapadin (1988) found 8
categories indicating a friend is:
–
Someone with whom we are
intimate
–
Whom we trust
–
On whom we can depend
–
Who shares
–
Who is accepting
–
Who is caring
–
With whom we are close
–
Whom we enjoy
•
de Vries (1996) came up
with 3 general aspects of friendship:
–
Affective elements
• Personal
thoughts and feelings, self-disclosure, intimacy, appreciation, and
affection. Provide encouragement,
emotional support, empathy, bolstering of self-concept, with an underlying
sense of trust, loyalty, and commitment.
–
Communal elements
• Participating
in common activities, similarity, giving and receiving assistance of a
nonaffective nature,
–
Sociable elements
• Friends as
sources of amusement, fun, and recreation.
Attributes of Friendships
•
Friendships can be
differentiated from romantic relationships.
– Love
involves more complex feelings than friendship.
– Love
relationships involve stricter standards of conduct.
– Friends tend
to spend less time with one another than lovers do.
– Friendships
typically include less obligations and are less emotionally intense than
romantic relationships are.
The Rules of Friendship
•
Rules of friendship are
the shared beliefs among individuals in a culture about which behaviors are
appropriate and inappropriate in friendships.
•
Through our interactions
with others beginning in infancy, we learn about particular rules of
friendship.
•
As a result, children’s
comprehension and expression of friendship rules change as they mature
(Bigelow, Tesson, & Lewko, 1996).
The Rules of Friendship
• Argyle
& Henderson (1984) found that different cultures endorse different rules of
friendship.
• People
do not always follow rules.
– It is
estimated that about 50% of people follow friendship rules (Gambrill, Florian,
& Thomas, 1999).
The Rules of Friendship
•
Volunteer help in time
of need.
•
Respect the friend’s
privacy.
•
Keep confidences.
•
Trust and confide in
each other.
•
Stand up for the other
person in their absence.
•
Don’t criticize each
other in public.
•
Show emotional support.
•
Look him/her in the eye
during conversation.
•
Strive to make him/her
happy while in each other’s company.
•
Don’t be jealous or
critical of each other’s relationships.
•
Be tolerant of each
other’s friends.
•
Share news of success
with each other.
•
Ask for personal advice.
•
Don’t nag.
•
Engage in joking or
teasing with the friend.
•
Seek to repay debts and
favors and compliments.
•
Disclose personal
feelings or problems to the friend.
Friendship Across the Life
Cycle
•
Various types of
friendships exist and friendships differ
depending on social context, degree of closeness and age and sex of the
participants.
Infancy
• From
birth, humans seem to be social animals, although peer relationships are
limited in infancy and young childhood.
• By
two years of age, children display parallel play, that is, they play next to
each other, yet do not interact (Barnes, 1971).
• Friendships
may emerge during the toddler age period, although these early friendships are
less complex than later friendships.
Childhood
Selman’s Cognitive
Model
•
Selman and colleagues
identified five successive stages in how children view friendships
–
Momentary playmate-
proximity defines friendship and friends are valued for their possessions.
–
One-way assistance-
children are able to discriminate between their own views and wishes and those
of their friends.
–
Fairweather cooperation-
children now begin to have a self-reflective and reciprocal perspective
–
Intimate-mutual sharing-
children and adolescents can take an objective perspective of the friendship.
–
Autonomous
interdependence- more complex friendships emerge; adolescents and adults
realize their friends need other independent relationships.
Buhrmester and Furman’s
Socioemotional Model of Friendship Development
• According
to Buhrmester and Furman (1986), children develop different interpersonal needs
as they grow older.
• These
needs are tenderness, companionship, acceptance, intimacy and sexuality.
• Each
stage of development is characterized by particular abilities that influence
the way children resolve each stage in order to meet their interpersonal needs.
Buhrmester and Furman’s
Socioemotional Model of Friendship Development
•
Juvenile Era- children enter elementary school and begin to value
the companionship and acceptance of other children.
•
Children learn about
cooperation and compromise in contrast to competition and greed.
•
Preadolescent Stage- children acquire a need for intimate exchange and
learn that their hopes, preferences, and interests are of value and shared by
others as well.
•
Preadolescents at this
stage usually have friends of their same age, background and interests.
•
Full-blown friendships
emerge during this stage and are characterized by intense closeness and
self-disclosure.
• Early
Adolescent- sexuality blossoms during this stage and adolescents develop a
sense of lust and interest in the opposite sex.
• Typically,
it is difficult to establish sexual relationships in early adolescence and this
can sometimes push adolescents into real or imagined sexual situations that may
be accompanied by feelings of anxiety, shame or guilt.
• In
late adolescence, however, people begin to fulfill their needs for intimacy and
sexuality.
Childhood Peer Status and Later Well-Being
• Researchers
have described three categories of children (Asher & Coie, 1990; Bukowski
& Cillessen, 1998):
– Children who
are popular
– Children who
are neglected
– Children who
are rejected
• Several
studies have concluded that children with poor peer adjustment are at risk for
problems later in life (Parker &Asher, 1987; Kupersmidt et al., 1990).
• More
specifically, research has found that children who are rejected by their peers
are at risk for dropping out of school, engaging in criminal behavior, and
showing poor psychological adjustment.
Adolescence
The Growing Importance
of Peers
•
The amount of time spent
with peers during the adolescent years increases significantly when compared
with childhood.
•
Larson et al. (1996)
found that time spent with family members decreased from 35% to 14% from grade
5 to 12, respectively.
•
Attachment researchers
also found that adolescents shift their attachment figures from parents to
peers and typically to romantic partners.
Friendships Within Cliques
and Crowds
• Cliques
are small groups of individuals who spend time together.
• Crowds
refer to several cliques coming together or large numbers of individuals who
share a specific reputation and who may or may not spend time together.
• As
adolescents grow up, their peer groups are constantly changing and the number
of other sex friendships increase gradually (Hartup, 1993).
Support, Conflict and Peer
Influence in Adolescent Relationships
•
Berndt (1996) has
identified three main features of adolescent relationships:
–
Support- related to intimacy, such as when friends have
intimate emotional conversations and support each other through difficult
times.
–
Conflict- arguments, competition, and discussions are
prevalent in adolescence, typically with parents, although this declines after
mid-adolescence (Laursen, Coy, & Collins, 1998).
–
Peer-pressure- reaches a peak at age 15 (Berndt, 1996) and
influences the adolescent’s choice of clothing, academic performance, drinking
behavior, smoking, sexual behavior, etc.
Young Adulthood
•
Intimacy is a key
component of relationships in young adulthood (Berndt, 1996; Erikson, 1950).
•
The search for intimacy
usually takes place when young adults start their college education.
•
Young adults often
adjust to new environments and social networks by making new friends while some
old friendships deteriorate, particularly in the first year of college (Shaver,
Furman & Buhrmester, 1985).
•
Time spent with same-sex
partners decreases while time spent with opposite-sex partners tends to
increase during the twenties.
•
In a study of 113 young
adults, Reis, Lin, Bennet, & Nezlek (1993) found that most participants
increased their levels of intimate relationships although this did not seem to
include increased levels of satisfaction.
Midlife
• Unfortunately,
the research done on midlife friendships is more suggestive than conclusive.
• Two
approaches to the question of what if anything is different or unique about
midlife friendships are:
– Age
differences
– Associations
between adult-related roles or life events and friendships
Age Group Comparisons with
Midlife Friendships
•
Researchers have looked
closely at three general components of friendships (Bliesner & Adams,
1992):
–
Structure- including how
much power or status each partner has, how similar they are, how much they like
each other, and how they connected friendships with networks of relationships
–
Process- how partners
behave toward each other and the thoughts and feelings friends have during
those interactions
–
Phases- establishment,
maintenance, and disseverment of friendships
•
Results from studies of
the structure, process, and phases of midlife friendships show that younger
individuals (at least men) tend to be more concerned about personality factors
as getting in the way of forming friendships, while older men tend to be
concerned about lack of time for friends (Wall, Pickert, & Paradise (1984).
•
Argyle & Henderson
(1984) found that older individuals (aged 20 to 35) were concerned about
respect for privacy and requests for personal advice as relating to the end of
a friendship, as opposed to teens (aged 17 to 19) who were concerned about
public criticism.
Life Event and Role Influences on Midlife
Friendships
•
Some of the major life
events that take place during midlife include marriage, parenthood, and one’s
own children departing from home.
•
Fehr (1999) identified a
pattern of dyadic withdrawal that affects most adults involved in romantic
relationships
–
Dyadic withdrawal occurs
when people begin to spend more time with their romantic partners and less time
with friends.
Married couples tend to shift their relationships from personal friends to
family and friends they share with their spouses.
Old Age
The Extent of
Sociability Among the Elderly
• There
is evidence to support the claim that friendships decline in old age (Larson,
1990; Cartensen, Isaacowitz & Charles, 1999; Fischer & Oliker, 1983).
• However,
not all older adults lose friends and circumstances such as employment, better
health, and living in a community versus a nursing home are all related with
having more friends in old age.
Perspectives on Levels of
Sociability
•
Some have proposed that
a decline in friendships during old age is due to barriers that only older
individuals have to overcome such as mandatory retirement, poor transportation,
and poor health (Havinghurst, 1961).
•
Others, however, argue
that the notion of barriers does not account for loss of friendships since most
older adults express much satisfaction with their social relationships (Lang
& Cartensen, 1994).
•
Proponents of the
disengagement perspective states that decreases in activity levels is a normal
part of aging and they do not see this phenomenon as having negative
consequences (Cumming & Henry, 1961).
•
A more recent
perspective known as
socioemotional selectivity
theory holds that as people age their friendships do decline, however, they
remain close with family members and intimate friends (Cartensen et al., 1999).
Friendships and Well-Being
in Old Age
• Research
has shown that while friendships (especially distant ones) do tend to decline
in old age, close friendships do contribute to older adults by decreasing the
risk of developing disabilities and increasing the probability of recovering
from health problems (Mendes de Leon et al., 1999).
Gender Differences in
Same-Sex Friendships
• Women’s
friendships tend to involve emotional sharing, while men’s friendships involve
more common activities (Fehr, 1996; Winstead, Derlega & Rose, 1997).
• Women’s
friendships have been characterized as being “face-to-face,” and men’s as
“side-by-side” (Wright, 1982).
• These
findings, however, may be due to
cultural pressures and expectations.
Individual Differences in
Friendships:
Need for Intimacy
• People
who need high levels of intimacy tend to have friendships that involve high
levels of self-disclosure, beliefs in the value of loyalty, and a desire to
avoid separation (McAdams, 1985).
• The
need for intimacy in friendships is linked to better long-term adjustment.
Depression
• People
who are depressed have less friends and other “supportive social networks”
(Gotlib & Whiffen, 1991).
• Feeling
one is not socially competent, as in the case of depressed individuals,
probably contributes to difficulties in establishing and maintaining
friendships.