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Article Excerpt
Children spend considerable time in gender-segregated friendship groups in which they develop gender-typed interpersonal styles that have implications for their adjustment and ability to interact with the other sex. However, most of what we know about gender and friendships comes from studies that included girls and boys but were designed to address other questions. Accordingly, studies such as those in this special issue that were specifically designed to examine the role of gender are especially valuable for learning about girls' and boys' friendships. These essays contribute to our understanding of girls' and boys' friendships in terms of structure (e.g., how many friends girls and boys have), content (e.g., how friends interact), and adjustment correlates. These contributions are discussed and suggestions for future research are provided. Suggestions include that future studies (a) work to increase our theoretical understanding of why gender differences in friendship occur, including by taking social cognition into greater account; (b) examine broad age ranges and follow youths over time; and (c) challenge findings about girls' and boys' friendships that are supported by relatively few studies.
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Friendships are highly significant relationships for both girls and boys (Bukowski, Newcomb, & Hartup, 1996; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998). They provide both girls and boys with pleasurable companionship, reliable alliances in the broader peer group, and help and support in times of need (Asher & Parker, 1989). Nevertheless, there are also consistent patterns of gender differences in friendships. The essays in this special issue address aspects of the role of gender in friendships that have been understudied.
The essays in this special issue cover a wide range of topics. Why this is the case becomes clear when thinking about gender as a special topic within the study of friendship. When considering other special topics, such as one type of friendship behavior or friendships in one age group, the possible scope of studies is limited compared to the study of friendships in general. In contrast, the starting point when considering gender is all possible topics related to friendships, and then the scope broadens to consider similarities and differences across girls and boys for each topic. Accordingly, it is useful to group the full range of possible topics into more specific areas of inquiry. For the purposes of this commentary, three domains are considered: (a) the structure of friendships (e.g., the number and interconnectedness of children's friendships, the demographic makeup of children's friendships), (b) the content of friendships (e.g., play styles, disclosure processes), and (c) the socioemotional adjustment correlates of friendships.
Notably, most past friendship studies related to these domains provide some information about gender. That is, most included girls and boys, and many included some information about gender differences. On one hand, it is encouraging that so many friendship studies have involved gender as a variable. However, this also may have led to a false sense of confidence regarding our understanding of girls' and boys' friendships. Most past studies were not designed to address questions related to the role of gender and did not address questions that are most relevant for learning about the friendships of girls and boys. Accordingly, it is timely and important that this special issue be devoted to the role of gender in friendships. In this commentary, contributions and possible extensions of the essays are discussed, and suggestions for future work are provided.
Structure, Content, and Socioemotional Adjustment Correlates of Girls' and Boys' Friendships: Contributions of the Studies and Possible Extensions
Structure. Considering the structure of friendships involves considering which children are friends with one another, how many friends children have, and whether children's friends are friends with one another. In terms of which children are friends with one another, one of the strongest findings regarding gender and peer relationships involves gender segregation, or the tendency of children to interact with peers of their own gender. Gender segregation has been found in observational studies (e.g., Martin & Fabes, 2001), in sociometric studies that indicate that children like peers of their own gender best (e.g., Hayden-Thomson, Rubin, & Hymel, 1987), and in studies that indicate that the majority of friendships are same-gender friendships (e.g., Kovacs, Parker & Hoffman, 1996). In fact, relatively little is known about cross-gender friendships, likely in part because peer-relationship researchers have considered them to be rare.
However, the findings of the study by McDougall and Hymel present a different perspective on the prevalence of cross-gender friendships. The primary purpose of their study was to examine children's conceptions of same-gender versus opposite-gender friendships; however, an additional purpose involved assessing children's involvement in cross-gender friendships. Interestingly, McDougal and Hymel found that almost all children thought it was possible to have cross-gender friends and that 90% of the children reported having a current cross-gender friend.
The McDougal and Hymel findings contrast sharply with other reports indicating a low prevalence of cross-gender friendships: for example, fewer than 15% (Kovacs et al., 1996) and fewer than 5% (Rose, Swenson, & Carlson, 2004). As McDougal and Hymel noted, this difference may be because the definition of friendship in other studies used stricter criteria, such as the friendship having to be with a current classmate and reciprocal. In contrast, McDougall and Hymel assessed children's own perceptions of whether they had any cross-gender friend at all.
The findings from the past studies suggest that cross-gender friends are rarely children's closest reciprocal friends at school. However, McDougall and Hymel's results caution us against using the past findings as a reason to disregard cross-gender friendships. It will be useful for future research to test within single studies the prevalence of cross-gender friendships using a variety of criteria (e.g., by assessing friendships in school versus other contexts, by allowing a small number versus unlimited nominations, and by requiring nominations to be reciprocal or not). Such research could support the idea that a higher prevalence of cross-gender friendships emerged in the McDougal and Hymel study because the friendship criteria were loosened.
The McDougal and Hymel study also could be extended by examining the nature of the cross-gender friendships. Gottman (1986) asserted that middle childhood cross-gender friendships go underground in that they are maintained in out-of-school settings but hidden at school (e.g., to avoid teasing about romantic involvement). However, in the McDougal and Hymel study, most youths considered their cross-gender friends to be either in-school friends or both in- and out-of-school friends. Nevertheless, given the strength of sex segregation at school, it would be interesting to know how much actual interaction these cross-gender friends had at school. Moreover, such...
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