6.2: Sex, Gender, and Friendship
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Friendships take many forms: close, family-like, acquaintance, or based on task or leisure activities or even on social media like Facebook. How many people have you heard describe someone as being a “Facebook friend?” Homogenous friends tend to be similar in sex, ethnicity, intelligence, economic status, and sexual orientation. However, homogeneous friends are not more “successful” friendships, nor is there any scientific data supporting the idea that homogeneous friends outlast heterogamous friends.
Children as young as 3 or 4 years old develop and demonstrate preferences for particular playmates. As children grow and continue into their primary socialization, their concepts of friendship become increasingly complex and focus on themes of satisfying interaction. Most children prefer same-sex friendships because of their similar interest in activities. Often, boys okay in larger groups and describe their friendships in terms of loyalty, helping, shared activities, and awareness of each others’ needs, but without overt affection. Girls tend to emphasize themes of closeness, verbal sharing, acceptance, and emotional sharing. A children age, the differences in friendships between the sexes becomes more distinct, with girls sharing information and communication with friends and boy sharing activities with friends. 86 In many ways, boys tend to view friendship as something that is instrumental and girls view friendship as something emotional.
Boys same-sex friendships also tend to be less intimate than that of girls same-sex relationships. “Research of high school boys has shown that there are several characteristics of upholding masculinity during adolescence that have implications for male friendship.” Vicki Helgesen explains three reasons for this 87 :
- Boys’ interactions are often fashioned through and characterized by mocking, teasing, and taunting. Boys are excited to tease each other and stand up to the teasing, as well.
- Boys’ identities are largely defined by heterosexism. They are expected to be heterosexual and masculine, totally unfeminine.
- Boys are expected to be “tough” by hiding their emotions. Often other boys will cut off another boy’s attempt to share emotion in order to maintain their demonstrated masculinity.
One thing sexes have in common in friendship trends is the rate of homosocial relationships. Homosocial relationships are relationships between people of the same sex within society . This term essentially describes the social bonds between people of the same sex within a society. Of course, there are a variety of social bonds experienced by people in society, but we continue to observe the majority of lasting friendships being homosocial friendships. Think about it: Homosocial relationships can include teammates in a sex-segregated sport, a bachelorette party, or a “guys’ night out.” Think back to your adolescent friendships. How many of them were homosocial rather than heterosocial?
In adult friendships, we see some of those trends resume. Some researchers tend to emphasize the idea than men prefer to have “side-by side” friendships while women tend to prefer “face-to-face” friendships. 88 Women’s friendships tend to emphasize reciprocity, whereas men’s friendships tend to be associative rather than reciprocal. However, men often self-disclose in their friendships and women often pursue specific activities with specific friends. So, men’s and women’s friendships may have more overlapping themes than they do differences.
The intimacy level of men’s long-term friendships tend to resemble those of women’s. While most research on adult long-term friendships has focused primarily on women’s friendships, even fewer studies have been conducted on minority men’s long-term friendships. So the intersectional approach to studying men’s long-term friendships is relatively uncharted territory.
Recent research by sociologist Tristan Bridges into so-called “man caves” demonstrates that in addition to being respites from the “feminine domain” of the rest of the house and specifically marked as a “man’s domain,” it is also a place where men plan to hang out with their male friends. While they understand this to be a place where “men can be men,” watch sports, curse, and talk openly with one another, it is also a place understood to be primarily used for homosocial bonding. 89 Sadly, most of the men Bridges spoke to didn’t actually use their man caves for anything, as they had no time with work and family responsibilities!
More research has emerged in the past decade on cross-sex adult friendships as more egalitarian relationships and sex roles have become more accepted and practiced. For women, benefits of being friends with men tend include knowing how men think and access to men’s greater resources and status. For men, some benefits of cross-sex friendships tend to include relief from rivalry within male friendships and enjoying more nurturing and emotional support. 90 Cross-sex friendships are often more emotionally satisfying for men than for women. 91
86
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