19.5.1: Friendships

Learning Objectives

1. Describe how the meaning and function of friendship changes during middle childhood.
2. Differentiate between Bigelow and La Gaipa’s three-stage model and Selman’s five-stage model of friendship development.
3. Explain how cognitive and social development influences children's understanding of friendship.

Friendships take on new importance as judges of one’s worth, competence, and attractiveness. Friendships offer the opportunity to learn social skills, such as how to communicate effectively with others and how to resolve differences. Children acquire ideas from one another about how to perform certain tasks, gain popularity, choose what to wear, say, and listen to, and how to behave. This society of children marks a transition from a life focused on the family to a life concerned with peers. Peers play a key role in a child’s self-esteem at this age, as any parent who has tried to console a rejected child will tell you. No matter how complimentary and encouraging the parent may be, being rejected by friends can only be remedied by renewed acceptance. ⁴³

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Peers influence a child’s self-esteem. Image by Robins Air Force Base is in the public domain.

Stages of Children's Friendship Concepts

Early concepts of friendship based on convenience or shared activities give way to more complex notions involving trust and mutual commitment. These changes are believed to be linked to advances in cognitive development, such as perspective-taking and moral reasoning (Bigelow, 1977; Selman, 1980).

Bigelow and La Gaipa

Bigelow and La Gaipa (1975) outlined three stages of friendship based on children's written descriptions of what they value in friends across different age groups.⁴⁵

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\): Three Stages to Children’s Conceptualization of Friendship¹

Stage	Name	Descriptions
Stage One	Reward-Cost	Friendship focuses on mutual activities. Children in early, middle, and late childhood all emphasize similar interests as the main characteristics of a good friend.
Stage Two	Normative Expectation	Focuses on conventional morality; that is, the emphasis is on a friend as someone who is kind and shares with you. Clark and Bittle (1992) found that fifth graders emphasized this in a friend more than third or eighth graders.
Stage Three	Empathy and Understanding	Friends are people who are loyal, committed to the relationship, and share intimate information. Clark and Bittle (1992) reported that eighth graders emphasized this more to a friend. They also found that as early as fifth grade, girls began to view the sharing of secrets and not betraying confidences as crucial to being a friend.

Selman

Selman (1980) took a more structured, Piagetian approach, outlining five stages of friendship development through children's perspective-taking abilities from early childhood to adulthood.

Table \(\PageIndex{2}\): Five Stages of Friendship from Childhood to Adulthood 48

Stage	Name	Descriptions
Stage One	Momentary Physical Interaction	A friend is someone with whom you are currently playing. Selman notes that this is typical of children between the ages of three and six years old. These early friendships are based more on circumstances (e.g., a neighbor) than on genuine similarities.
Stage Two	One-way assistance	A friend is someone who does nice things for you, such as saving you a seat on the school bus or sharing a toy with you. However, children in this stage do not always think about what they are contributing to the relationships. Nonetheless, having a friend is important, and children will sometimes put up with a not-so-nice friend just to have someone to be with. Children as young as five and as old as nine may be in this stage.
Stage Three	Fair-weather Cooperation	Children are very concerned with fairness and reciprocity, and thus, a friend is someone who returns a favor. In this stage, if a child does something nice for a friend, there is an expectation that the friend will do something nice for them at the first available opportunity. When this fails to happen, a child may break off the friendship. Selman found that some children as young as seven and as old as twelve are in this stage.
Stage Four	Intimate and mutual sharing	Typically, between the ages of eight and fifteen, a friend is someone with whom you can share things you would tell no one else. Children and teens in this stage no longer “keep score,” and do things for a friend because they genuinely care for the person. If a friendship dissolves in this stage, it is usually due to a violation of trust. However, children in this stage do expect their friend to share similar interests and viewpoints, and may take it as a betrayal if a friend likes someone that they do not.
Stage Five	Autonomous interdependence	A friend is someone who accepts you and whom you accept as they are. At this stage, children, teens, and adults begin to accept and appreciate the differences between themselves and their friends. They are also not as possessive, so they are less likely to feel threatened if their friends have other relationships or interests. Children are typically twelve or older in this stage.

Social Skills and Emotional Benefits

Friendships are very important for children. Social interaction with another child who is similar in age, skills, and knowledge fosters the development of many valuable social skills that will benefit the individual throughout their life (Bukowski, Buhrmester, & Underwood, 2011). In these relationships, children learn how to initiate and maintain social interactions with other children. They learn skills for managing conflict, such as turn-taking, compromise, and bargaining. Play also involves the mutual, sometimes complex, coordination of goals, actions, and understanding. Through these experiences, children develop friendships that provide additional sources of security and support, in addition to those provided by their parents.⁴⁷

References, Contributors and Attributions

1. Lifespan Development - Module 6: Middle Childhood by Lumen Learning references Psyc 200 Lifespan Psychology by Laura Overstreet, licensed under CC BY 4.0

43. Lifespan Development - Module 6: Middle Childhood by Lumen Learning references Psyc 200 Lifespan Psychology by Laura Overstreet, licensed under CC BY 4.0

45. Lifespan Development - Module 6: Middle Childhood by Lumen Learning references Psyc 200 Lifespan Psychology by Laura Overstreet, licensed under CC BY 4.0

47. Content by Dawn Rymond is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective by Martha Lally and Suzanne Valentine-French is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

48. Lifespan Development: A Psychological Perspective by Martha Lally and Suzanne Valentine-French is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Bigelow, B. J. (1977). Children’s friendship expectations: A cognitive-developmental study. Child Development, 48(1), 246–253. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128895

Bukowski, W. M., Buhrmester, D., & Underwood, M. K. (2011). Peer relationships as a developmental context. In M. K. Underwood & L. H. Rosen (Eds.), Social development: Relationships in infancy, childhood, and adolescence (pp. 153–179). Guilford Press.

Clark, M. L., & Bittle, J. L. (1992). Friendship expectations and self-perceptions in elementary and middle childhood. Child Study Journal, 22(1), 49–72.

Rubin, K. H., Bukowski, W. M., & Parker, J. G. (2006). Peer interactions, relationships, and groups. In N. Eisenberg (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 571–645). Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470147658.chpsy0310

Selman, R. L. (1980). The growth of interpersonal understanding: Developmental and clinical analyses. Academic Press.