friendship

Early childhood

Although there is no clear consensus regarding at what age children first begin to form friendships, the foundations of such friendships begin to emerge quite early. Toddlers behave in a regular, predictable manner in their interactions with familiar peers earlier than they do with unfamiliar peers. Within the first two years of life, children show stable preferences for certain peers over others; further, with these preferred playmates, the interaction patterns they follow differ from those with other familiar peers. By the time children reach preschool age, the existence of true friendships is even more evident.

Children themselves tend at first to define friendships in terms of interactions, such as “we play together.” Companionship is generally viewed as the primary function of friendship among toddlers and preschoolers. Preschool friends have more social contact with each other, talk more with each other, and demonstrate more equality and less dominance in their interactions with each other than they do in their interactions with nonfriends. Differences between friends and nonfriends are particularly evident in social pretend play. By preschool, children also begin to incorporate more emotional and affective functions into their friendships. Preschool friends express more positive affect toward each other and score higher on measures of mutual liking, closeness, and loyalty than nonfriends do. Moreover, even young children frequently become sad or lonely when a friend moves away.

Friendships are not always harmonious, however, and young children may engage in conflict with their friends. In fact, in early childhood, friends tend to engage in more conflict than nonfriends. Yet, friends also expend more effort to resolve conflict and are more successful at such resolution than are nonfriends. Conflict resolution is frequently seen as one of the important social skills that young children develop within their earliest friendships.

Additionally, friendships are not always mutual among young children. Although the definition of friendship typically requires reciprocity, unilateral friendships, in which only one child of a pair nominates the other as a friend, are quite common in early childhood. In fact, about half of nominated preschool friendships are unilateral.

Middle childhood

Friendships make up an important aspect of development in middle childhood, when much time is devoted to social play and social interaction skills become increasingly important. School-age children spend a great deal of time interacting with peers and thus are presented with many opportunities for extending the friendship skills they acquired in early childhood. Children tend to form friendships with individuals who are similar to themselves in a variety of dimensions.

Some research suggests that there is greater similarity between friends on characteristics that are high in reputational salience. For example, school-age boys tend to be especially similar to their friends in aggressiveness. Children at this age are developing increasing independence from their parents, and their relationships with friends may be somewhat less dependent on parental involvement than was the case in preschool. Children may spend more time with their friends outside the direct supervision of an adult. Coupled with the social and cognitive advances of middle childhood, spending time together with a friend may promote the development of shared intimacy—which frequently takes the form of shared secrets—and becomes a defining feature of friendship for children at this age.

School-age friendships are differentiated from early-childhood friendships in a number of additional ways. Friendships in middle childhood are more stable over time than friendships in early childhood yet typically less so than adolescent or adult friendships. In addition, friendship nominations are much more frequently reciprocated in middle childhood than in early childhood. Although same-sex (versus other-sex) friendships compose the significant majority of friendships in early and middle childhood, there is a sharp decline in the proportion of other-sex friendships in middle childhood. A high proportion of same-sex friendships remain until adolescence.

As in early childhood, school-age friendships are characterized by social contact, talking, equality, positive affect, mutual liking, closeness, and loyalty. In addition, by this age, emotion is expressed with friends more readily than with nonfriends; affective reciprocity, emotional intensity, and demonstrations of emotional understanding are all more common. As in preschool, friendships in middle childhood are defined in large part by shared activities, yet in middle childhood, the concept of a friendship as transcending shared activities and having continuity over time emerges more fully. By middle childhood, friendships are frequently more complex and more similar to adult friendships than are children’s earliest friendships. Loyalty, shared values, and shared rules become important during the school years, and shared interests, empathy, common understanding, and self-disclosure gain increasing importance by preadolescence. Communication between friends also differs from that between nonfriends. Conflict remains more common between friends than between nonfriends, as does its resolution.

Friendships still tend to be relatively immature in comparison with adolescent and adult friendships, however. Children at this age are better able to take the perspective of another person, but they are still primarily focused on what they need or want out of the relationship rather than what their friend may need or want.