Moral Obligations

Moral obligations also create rules of relevance. The women I spoke with held similar ideas about the moral obligations of friendship, which may be summarized in three categories: personal relational virtues; respect for personal liberty; and communal responsibility in warranted circumstances.

Although I did not ask directly, I listened in my interviews for beliefs about the virtues that qualify a friend. Women's first descriptions of their best friend and what they "liked best" about their friend repeatedly specified honesty, caring and concern for others, trustworthiness, and generosity; and they frequently mentioned constancy and strength of character (my terms). Their language was concrete rather than abstract, avoiding terms like loyalty or fidelity or devotion, which represent formal virtues of other institutions.

When I raised the subject of loyalty, the women tended to abandon the female chauvinism they usually applied to gender comparisons of friendship: this is one of the few friendship virtues that they attributed equally to men and women. One possible interpretation of this pattern involves the status of loyalty as a public institutional virtue as well as a private one. Public institutions are the traditional "male sphere." Since organizations of men developed the public virtues of loyalty, comradeship, collegiality, and union "brotherhood," women are not likely to claim superiority on mas-

culine turf. A second explanation may lie in the widespread assimilation of moral philosophy's emphasis on the disinterested motivations required to establish a virtue. For example, some say altruism cannot be defined by emotional attachment but only by selfless concern for the good of another.^[25] Women, however, are likely to recognize their own emotional investment in relationship as well as the web of dependencies relationships establish. They may not perceive their loyalties as selfless. The women I interviewed were very likely to describe important relationships in these terms of attachment and to substitute them for terms like loyalty or fidelity.

A series of questions about rights and obligations among friends uniformly evoked circumspect libertarian themes. Do friends have a right to try to change a woman's attitudes or beliefs or way of doing things? No, responded a majority of respondents, "Hardly ever." Asked to specify occasions when such influence would be appropriate, most invoked times when a woman was being self-destructive or harming others, especially children. Those who believed that "trying" was acceptable spoke of the need to approach with delicacy and respect for the integrity of the other. "'Try' to change her, no. But one should be able to 'offer' change." And another said, "I'd be careful about making judgments. I might say 'If it were me. . ..

Do friends have a right to tell a woman her behavior is immoral and wrong? Because this question posed a sharper moral dilemma, answers were less negative and more deliberate. They upheld the value of moral engagement between friends, even at the risk of disharmony. Answers cautioned against moralism and disrespectful judgment. They aimed at preserving a space for individual differences. Again, the interests of children were preeminent considerations, as were the preservation of a woman's integrity and serf-esteem and (implicitly or explicitly) her esteem in a community.

If you're a friend, yes, you should [tell her she is wrong.] But you should know when to keep your mouth closed too.

If she's doing something that's really making her look bad in the community—a friend should make her aware. She can still do what she wants.

If you could save her from a future of disillusionment, dismay, and unhappiness, you should.

A friend can say she believes a behavior is immoral, but I don't believe in judging. If a friend were doing something harmful to herself or her kids, I would tell her. If I thought an affair was immoral, I'd keep it to myself.

The first response to questions about obligations among friends always involved a concern for the welfare of the woman or her children. This value always superseded the values of liberty and autonomy for either partner in the friendship. When questions moved from a friend's rights of intervention to a friend's obligation to intervene or sacrifice, the answers became unambiguous when grave issues of welfare were posed. Two-thirds or more of the women answered a firm "Always" (as opposed to "Sometimes" or "Hardly ever") to these questions:

¾ If a friend seemed to be in trouble emotionally—having a break-down—do her friends have a responsibility to try to get help for her?

¾ .If a woman were being beaten by her husband, do her friends have a responsibility to take her in if she asks?

¾ If a friend were ill or somehow unable to care for her children, do her friends have a responsibility to care for them?

¾ If a friend was beating or abusing her children, do her friends have a responsibility to stop it?

¾ In this same case, if all else failed, would they have a responsibility to call police or some outside agency?

Respondents who hesitated to answer "Always" to these questions generally specified that others, such as kin, might be the ones who should intervene; but unquestionably friends should if more appropriate others did not.

Spontaneous accounts of real-life moral dilemmas also confirmed the strength of this set of values. Many accounts also forcefully demonstrated the crosscutting obligations that made honoring these values difficult. Several women had taken their friends' children into their homes or had friends take theirs, in two cases for fairly extended stays. All were certain they were right in having done so, even though they had subjected their own families to discomfort. Three women had taken in friends in the process of divorce, although these situations proved very troubling to bus-

bands, even the cooperative ones. Hilda's husband, who was not one of the cooperative ones, forced her friend to return home. Hilda reflected, "Maybe she was intruding; but at the time, all I could think of was that I was there." Many years after the incident, Hilda still recalls with regret and bitterness that she failed a friend.

Finally, several women talked about criticizing or being criticized by friends on childrearing issues.

I've tried to get Trish to change her lifestyle to a healthier one for her kids—and for her. Then, I go round and round on whether I'm right. I usually end up feeling it's not my place to change her.

Sometimes when I've let my kids go out of line, Gwen will let me know. If I wasn't paying enough attention, just letting it slide, I'll look at it a little harder.

These responses suggest that the rules of relevance in women's best friendships permit vast familiarity with private personal and family matters in each other's lives. This extensive disclosure, in turn, permits a moral discourse between friends—one that combines a tolerance of individual liberty and a concern for family responsibility. Women friends viewed the welfare of a friend's children and of the friend herself as the signal issue for applying constraint. Despite considerable intimacy and moral interchange, the women I interviewed meticulously avoided conflict with friends. This suppression of conflict was only one tacit rule of relevance I inferred from women's testimony. I pursue other tacit rules in the next chapter when I examine the reasons women gave for withdrawing from friendships.