Customary and Residual Practices of Friendship

Networks of Close Friends and Kin

The titles "friend," "close friend," or "best friend" mark the only statuses in the institution of friendship. I wished to learn how women chose the status of close or best friend. Who were the people to whom they felt closest? I asked this question a few different ways. Very early in each interview, before mentioning friends or kin, I asked, Who are the people you would describe as most a part of your life? Every one of the twenty-one women an-

swered this ambiguous question by first listing husbands and children. Thirteen added kin, mostly parents and siblings. Thirteen also listed nonkin friends. Only two listed nuclear family members alone.

Every woman resubmitted all these names when I asked for information on those to whom she feels closest, whether nearby or far away. Women who had listed only nuclear family members for the former question now added close kin and close friends. Those who had listed these earlier usually named a few more of each. Members of both groups added far-away kin and friends, closer-by immediate kin whom they saw infrequently, and husbands of close friends or kin.^[26]

The average size of these close networks, counting only adult, nonhousehold names, was seven (corresponding to Fischer's finding in his much larger data set).^[27] The smallest close network belonged to Cass, who listed only a sister, and her own children, although she frequently visited her many local relatives. Kay claimed the largest close network, listing fourteen outside her nuclear family. Kay listed more couple-friends than most and fewer kin.

Kay's close network was one of seven—a third of my sample—in which friends outnumbered kin; in these networks women did not always list more friends but included fewer kin. Most of these women had fewer kin in the area than the eleven women whose kin dominated close networks. The last three close networks were evenly divided between friends and kin, even though all three women had many relatives nearby; thus these networks differ from a pattern in Fischer's data, which associated larger kin networks with smaller friendship networks.^[28]

Just over half the members of most close networks were nearby friends and kin—local people or people living within an hour's drive. A majority of the women listed three or more local close friends and kin and at least some others who lived within an hour's drive. True to the stereotype of mobile Californians, these women frequently commuted the distance of an hours drive—or further—to visit kin and friends they listed as close.

Close networks numbered mostly women. Six networks were entirely female. Only Lee, who is single, listed a network where fewer than three-quarters of the members were women. Men named were almost always fathers, brothers, in-laws, or husbands

of close women friends. Only two women, Lee and Lynn (Lynn was newly married), listed men who were not relatives or couple-friends. Moreover, although most of the women I interviewed had jobs, only seven placed co-workers in their close network (usually one co-worker). And although a majority considered some neighbors friends, only five included neighbors among their closest friends (again, usually one neighbor).

With my third question about the people to whom women felt closest, I sought the name of one "closest" or "best" friend, to focus later questions. I asked, Is there one person you feel closest to? From the total of twenty-one women, six named friends; four named sisters; one named her mother; one her sweetheart. Of the seventeen married women, nine named their husbands or children in their answer. I am intrigued by the fact that only half of the married women named their husbands. Yet I hesitate to interpret it, given the possibility—suggested in another study—that many women forget to list their husbands.^[29] (To avoid the dilemma, I began a later series of questions by reminding women that they might name husbands and then proceeded through my long list.)

Continuing to seek the name of a closest woman friend, I repeated the question when necessary, asking if there were one person other than husband, child, or parent to whom a woman felt closest. At the first repeated question, several women who had named either husband or children then listed either children or husband; three listed parents, including one woman who said her mother was her best friend. The question finally yielded these results: seventeen women listed nonkin friends, and four listed sisters (one woman who named a nonkin friend added, "also, my sister"; I perhaps arbitrarily counted her among the seventeen).

When I asked if the friend or sister they listed was a best friend, twelve of the seventeen who had named friends affirmed the label, as did all four who listed sisters. I accepted sisters as best friends because preliminary and later interviews all suggested that women who list sisters as best friends describe the relationships in terms similar to those others apply to best friends. And they distinguish relationships with these sisters from the generally close relationships with sisters they do not consider best friends. Of course sister-best friendships also differ from other best friendships: they have longer histories and are more often perceived as eternal.

They tend to feature the kind of senior-junior themes that only some nonsororal best friendships have.

Five women declined to describe as a "best friend" the one person outside the household they felt "closest to." Since all five had listed these friends earlier among people they felt closest to, I know they did not randomly offer the names to comply with what they perceived as my wish to hear about a best friend. Nevertheless, a few said they did not feel appreciably closer to "one person." In four of these five cases, the women later described the friendships as somewhat less intimate and attached than those other women willingly labeled "best"; even though they appear less close, I included them in the following discussions of closest friendships (occasionally referring to them as "best friends" along with the others).

Contrary to my expectations, the term best friend seemed to be used similarly across classes and subcultures. Those women who hesitated to give that title to a close friend often described only their husbands as "best friends." Yet their marriages were not more companionate than those of women who named women best friends. In fact, women with women best friends were also likely to call theft husbands best friends. Companionate marriage, defined by women's references to symmetry, amity, joint activity, and couple socializing, does not seem to impede women's close attachments to women friends. Characteristics of personality appeared to account for attachments, casting women who do not form best friendships into more dependent, but not more companionate, marital roles.

How Closest Friends Met

Women establish close friendships in contexts that introduce them to attractive people and allow them to begin the exchange of self-disclosure that opens a close friendship. That statement fits what I found. Best friends generally met in contexts that made self-disclosure easier and minimized its risks.

High school and college friendships unfold during years in which girls have considerable time for building relationships and in which psychological needs and social pressures invest friendships with enormous value. Every woman I spoke with described

high school friendships as having been extremely important: "They were my whole life." "Everything was staked on friends." Separations and partings of ways had broken many women's ties to high school friends. Yet several had kept these friendships over considerable obstacles. Kay, for example, still regularly corresponded with four high school friends, although she had not seen any of them in years. One of them was socially mobile: "Jeanette's in a whole different social realm. She's got a couple of degrees, a lot of money, and all. You'd think we'd grow apart. When she came out here, we hadn't seen each other for ten years. But we hadn't changed a bit. We're both still crazy. We got along as if it were yesterday." A large number of high school attachments similarly promised to endure.

Frances and Carol met in grade school and have been best friends ever since; both still live in the community where they were born. Lisa and Jean each met closest friends in high school, moved away from home, and yet kept up intense friendships long distance. Jean developed other very close friendships in the decades since high school but continues to regard Ellen as her very closest friend: "It just doesn't depend on seeing each other a lot." Lisa, who is in her midtwenties, recently moved out of state and away from Doreen, her best friend since high school. Being in a new relationship with Jesse and working full-time, she has not developed a comparably close friendship in her new town: "I've got a lot of good friends back home. Here, I've met quite a few people, but I don't have very many friends."

Other women had also kept up friendships from school days. Five listed high school friends on their close network lists. Most of these women added newer "best friends," whom they had met in more immediate contexts such as spheres of voluntary participation or, for mothers, arenas of participation with children. Three women met their best friends in classes at community college, the context that—along with mothers' groups—sparked the most ardent friendships among married women. Others met in church or in independent socializing.

Friendships set in contexts where women communicated deeply felt personal adult experience were especially likely to be ardent ones. Some of the warmth reflected the newness of adult-made

friendships. But much of it was clearly the mutuality and the recognition of developing aspects of self.

The women who met in community college classes had all married and borne children after high school before they returned to school. Each of the four became attracted to her friend in the moral-intellectual engagement of this setting. Jean described the tight-knit group that formed in one class.

We were all married suburban housewives who were going back to school. We'd start talking about things in class, and we'd continue afterward in the cafeteria. Then we'd start coming an hour early. It was almost like being at camp. It was such a close experience—that sharing of ideas, thinking in new ways about our lives. Most of us hadn't had that experience. We all had neighborhood friends, but it wasn't the same.

Two women had had similarly galvanic introductions to friends in groups where women talked about being mothers. Arlene remembered the pleasure of a spontaneous meeting of mothers at a nursery school, which turned into a year-long group, prompting friendships that lasted for years. "It was such an experience! . . . To discover other women going through the exact same things. From an accidental discussion, we ended up revealing the most intimate details of our relationships with husbands and children. . .. Now, after not seeing one of them for years, we can pick up where we left off." Arlene described Heidi, whom she encountered in that group and continued to see outside it, as her "spiritual sister" because they thought out so many contemporary issues together.

Work is a context that provides common interests, challenges, and problems. It brings people together regularly and offers them varying opportunities and incentives to get to know each other very well. But this and other studies show that people are unlikely to recruit close friends at work, although the likelihood varies with work settings and cultures. Probing the circumstances that favor friendship at work, Fischer found that "years on the job, hours worked, working unusual hours, and [for men] moving for the job promote involvement with co-workers at and away from the workplace."^[30]

It may be that people hesitate to recruit close friends at work

because the voluntary character of friendship is at risk in this fixed setting; or perhaps here competition or stratification of roles impedes trust. For whatever reason, only five of the women I interviewed listed co-workers or former co-workers as members of their close network, although many more reported friendly relations with co-workers, with whom they discussed problems at work. Four of the five with co-worker close friends considered a co-worker a "best" or "closest" friend. Because the women I interviewed all worked in traditional women's jobs and their patterns of employment were typical of this sector (for example, interrupted rather than long stretches of employment), the four women with co-worker best friends did not fit the categories Fischer found most likely to encourage friendships at work. Personal characteristics, not professional ones, distinguish this group from others in my sample. The four women who formed close friendships with coworkers are among the five women I spoke to who spontaneously described themselves in terms of uncertain self-image or of self-chosen or inflicted social isolation.

Hilda traced the work-influenced origins of one of her older close friendships. Hilda and Rose met nearly forty years ago working a factory shift that let out when the rest of the world was still asleep. "We were on the same awful shift. We got off in the morning with no place to go. So we'd stop for breakfast, and we just started gravitating toward each other." Their dose friendship weathered their marriages, divorces, jobs, and childrearing; for thirty years, it survived a separation of half a continent. The friends speak regularly by phone and visit every year, although both are far from wealthy.

Hilda met her closest local friend, Emma, at work as well. They have the same occupation, although they no longer work at the same site. Both work full-time. Having ended her marriage long ago when divorce was rarer, Hilda enjoyed neighborly help but little sociable companionship in her off-work hours. Emma, who is widowed, became Hilda's first sociable companion in decades. With children grown, they evolved a routine of get-togethers and joint recreations.

Karen and Maria also met at work. Daily contact allowed Karen, who described herself as "a bit of a loner," to form an interest in and attachment to a friend in a setting that demanded little initia-

tive. The couples began socializing on weekends. This was the first close friendship Karen developed since she married David two years ago. In what was one of the smallest close networks in my interviews, Karen included Maria, with her own husband, and her mother. Sylvia, who described herself as "until recently, almost a hermit," is the only respondent who met her closest friend through her husband—in a joint business the two couples now conduct.

All these women had used the routine exposure and civility of the workplace to build friendship slowly without initially risking great initiative and self-revelation. Although each eventually expanded the rules of relevance of her relationship from workplace civility to sociable and then intimate friendship, all maintained a greater reserve in their friendships than the more extroverted members of the sample did.

Few women had met best friends in the neighborhood, even though a fair majority had sociable visiting relations with a few neighbors. Friendships with neighbors tended to be a residual pattern; that is, neighborhood friendships were generally undertaken by those with economic or other constraints upon friendship choices.^[31] With the women I interviewed, economic constraints influenced friendly relations with neighbors in contrasting ways, depending on whether a woman perceived her neighbors as "similar"—largely, but not simply, a matter of race. Penny and Hilda, both white, lived in low-income, racially integrated, single-family neighborhoods. Neither developed visiting relations with neighbors. Cass, also white, lived for years in a poor, white, ethnically mixed neighborhood but avoided neighbors because her kin were close by. Janine, who is black, cultivated many friendly relations and recruited all of her nonkin close friends among black neighbors in a neighborhood to which she was a relative newcomer. Mothers of young children, whatever their locality, were most likely to establish close friendships in the neighborhood.^[32] The close networks of several women included the names of former neighbors who had become close friends when they were both home with young children.

In sum, most best friendships formed in situations where women had an opportunity to choose an attractive friend and to build a relationship through self-disclosure. Contexts that constrained free entry or exit from close friendship were avoided by

all but those whose personalities or material circumstances encouraged them to recruit friends in the accessible areas of workplace or neighborhood.

Are Friends Similar?

Given the importance of empathy and identification in women friends' standards of commitment, we would expect certain similarities among best friends. Studies have shown friends to be similar along most dimensions, whether socioeconomic, value-oriented, or personal.^[33] Generally, they explain, people like people who are like them and thus choose similar friends when they can, This suggests that close women friends' emphasis on disclosure and empathy as standards of commitment encourages homogeneity between best friends, since it might be easier to understand and participate in the feelings of someone who seems like oneself.

How were closest friends similar? All were very similar in race, age, marital status, and life-cycle stage, less similar in household income and religion. All but one of the closest friendships were between women of the same race; fourteen were between women of the same marital status; all were between women. Seventeen of the twenty-one women were similar in age, within six years. Sixteen were at the same stage of childrearing (both friends with children who were either young, older, or grown). I did not inquire about friends' education, but accounts indicated rough similarity there too.

The strongest similarity between closest friends, after gender and race, was in work status. Eighteen of twenty-one women had closest friends who also either worked at jobs or at home. The full-time paid workers were most likely to have closest friends whose jobs took up the same percentage of their time. Eight of nine of their closest friends also worked full-time (the one exception was a sister-friend).

By contrast, only seven believed their friends' households were at about the same income level (although I suspect that most were noting fairly small income differences). Half had closest friends of the same religion. When we exclude the sister-friendships, however, only six of the seventeen remaining closest friendships were between women of the same religion, even though a majority of

the respondents mentioned that they regularly practiced their religion.

Social segregation is probably the ultimate explanation of the racial similarity among best friends. White women and women of color rarely even engage in acquaintances in the contexts in which close friendships grow. The one cross-race best friendship, between Rita and June, grew out of work in a community service program. Their joint project encouraged them to think and talk about racism and cultural differences, and their personal relationship developed in this sensitizing climate.

The other dimensions of similarity among women underline the importance of empathy and mutuality in their close friendships. Similarities in age, marital status, and childrearing stage suggest that women draw closest to others who are sharing central identity-defining experiences. Between single women and married women, childless women and those with children, a gulf separates their interests, priorities, and problems.

Several women spoke of abrupt and inevitable changes in friendships when they or their friends married. Sometimes the change was provoked by a husband who disapproved of continued friendships with single friends or who wanted his wife to alter the terms of an old friendship to ones more consonant with a new primary commitment. Usually, women located the problem between the friends themselves.

After you're married, you're more tied down. I didn't think of it that way at the time, but Chris sure did.

We were still friends, but they weren't able to tear around the way we were used to—didn't have the money or the time. They had an interest in the marriage and the house.

I think friendships change because you have different expectations about someone who is married. That you won't see them as much alone. I didn't want to depend on her as much.

They didn't call me as often once I got married. They were out looking for boyfriends, and we had less and less in common. They looked at me differently.

Another recalled the pain of adjusting to newly diverging needs in the friendship when her friend remarried:

I missed her, even though she was still here. It seemed that when she was in need, I was always there. But when I was in need. . .. She didn't want to lose the friendship, but we couldn't stop it. If I were to call her up and say, Let's do something, chances are she'd have plans. They had their own set of friends—couples. I'd understand that, but I got my feelings kind of hurt at times.

Most of the friends who occupied different marital statuses met when their marital status was similar. Single and divorced women, most of whom worked, also often socialized during times married women identified as couple time or family time. Meeting now, single and married women would experience asymmetries like the impediments to mutuality just described. A husband's relationship to his wife's single friend would become a factor in the successful continuation of a friendship; at most, it might mean that socializing time is completely usurped.

Similar differences separated new mothers from their more foot-loose childless friends. Arlene described the decline of a college friendship that had held despite differences in marital status but dissolved when Arlene's first child was born: "There had always been a real chasm in our experiences, but we really clicked intellectually. When Tim was horn, the chasm expanded. I was going through something she just could not comprehend. And I was so involved with him, I didn't have the room left in my life for her."

Arlene, and others, allowed close friendships to fade as they drew closer to friends who also had children. Other pairs of friends seemed to anticipate the problem. Whether or not they did so consciously, several avoided the strain by synchronizing their childbearing. More than a few respondents echoed Nancy's response to a question about how close friendships fared once her first child was born. "All three of us were first pregnant together. We went along together from school to marriage to first babies. We still got together just as much, only now we had our kids."

Preschool, school-age, and teenage children each present a world of issues and problems to their primary caretakers. It is not surprising then to hear the mother of a teenage girl or the mother of several boys exclaim over the special camaraderie of a close friend whose parallel experience helped her interpret a very important one of her own. "It's so reassuring to commiserate on what

it's like to have teenage daughters screaming about what horrible mothers we are." Another, more restrained comment: "We both live in an all-male household. She knows that having boys in the house is not always bliss."

Similarities in employment seem to aim at symmetry of time available for friendship, which symbolically represents an equality of need. I interviewed only a few permanently full-time housewives. They preferred to visit friends during the day, when husbands were at work. Nonemployed women were likely to constitute their pool of potential friends, because employed women posed scheduling difficulties that were onerous to accommodate. Nancy, for example, who does very part-time work at home, was adjusting to her close friend Annette's return to a full-time job. "Annie just called me this morning while her boss was out. I'd been waiting to hear about her weekend. She didn't even get to finish the story. I miss our leisurely coffees." When asked what she wished was different about her friendships, Nancy said wistfully: "I guess everyone wishes to see more of her close friends than is necessary. I just wish we had more time to laugh together." Nancy's children were increasingly independent; and most of her friends who had stayed home with young children had returned to jobs. "It's difficult to meet friends. I think most of my friends work now. Those I'd like to be with or get acquainted with, they don't really have the time. It seems to be more difficult to meet people."

Housewives want friends who are available when they themselves are most available. Women who have jobs outside the home, raise children, and keep house—the universal triple role of employed mothers—need friends who are prepared to compromise with their severe time constraints. Women who labor under the same pressures are most likely to be amenable to the compromises working a double day exacts. Few of the employed women spoke directly of this motive. Thea is one who did. "Even at the time I met Catherine, she had zero time for anything outside her family. . .. Both of us are so busy, and so intense and driven. It's really nice to have someone who understands that in me. We can relax together with that."

As Thea found disappointing but familiar, Catherine's demanding professional schedule interfered with her friendship commitments many times.

She has a tendency to do what I also do—to promise to do things that, in fact, she's too busy to do.

I'll feel, "Sure, she's doing it again." And then I realize that I often have to do the same kind of thing. I just remind myself that I shouldn't depend too heavily on Catherine for some things.

Other employed women are also likely to understand work problems, even if they perform different work. Because women are concentrated in very few kinds of work, they are especially likely to grasp others' work predicaments. All seventeen of the employed women said they would discuss work problems with their friends. All but three regularly talked with friends about work. Another reason employed women have employed friends may be that friends lead one another into the workforce. At a time when more women are financially compelled to hold jobs and when more women wish to find them,^[34] the path from housewife to employed worker may be cleared by an exemplary friend.

Popular literature portrays a mutual resentment between full-time housewives and employed mothers. My interviews picked up only faint echoes of this resentment, which is purportedly rooted in conflicting values. The most apparent explanation for the strains I detected, however, is the difficulty of achieving mutuality and symmetry of exchange when different kinds of work generate different sets of needs. Mutuality and symmetry are important standards of commitment among best friends. In relationships less intense than best friendships, even those within the close network, there was less similarity in work status. I believe this is, in part, because the standards of mutuality are more relaxed here.

Sociological analyses of similarities in friendship have argued that structural constraints like poverty and lack of physical mobility limit people's ability to achieve desirable homogeneous relationships.^[35] The constraints that employed mothers' triple role put on their time, however, do not appear to decrease their chance of finding friends in similar situations; employed women probably have a balancing advantage in broader spheres for recruiting friends. Finding friends with compatible time constraints, and the issue of equality this represents, may be important enough that, although their jobs limit the time women spend with friends, women still strive to find friends with the qualities they consider important.

Best friends met only occasionally in voluntary organizations. As mothers of youngsters, most of the women I interviewed had little time for organized activity. And although some socialized with other women and couples they met at church, in children's recreation, or in the few voluntary organizations that they belonged to, they did not often do so. Several friends had joined each other in independent hobbies; several shopped together. But the women themselves attached little importance to this camaraderie. Best friendship centers on intimate talk; the women often cited joint activity as a vehicle for "just sitting and talking." They believed coparticipation in sports and clubs was much more integral to husbands' friendships than to their own, as studies of men's friendships confirm.^[36]

Pairs of women friends are very similar. The demographic results here parallel other friendship studies. Yet if these women correctly assessed friends' household income—and because women are consumers, they are excellent readers of economic indicators—they may be less similar in this respect than men friends are.^[37] Best friends may also have a lower rate of religious similarity than friends in general. As women's comments here showed, only some differences in beliefs and values inhibited their friendship; others they effectively ignored.

If indeed women friends are more similar in working hours and life cycle than in economic status and religion, this similarity may correspond to standards of commitment that very strongly emphasize psychological identification and empathy. Women best friends —more than women friends in general or men best friends—may select each other because of similar characteristics, such as marital status, that powerfully shape the experiences of personal life that women best friends talk about. Other similarities that figure less prominently in intimate disclosure may be less important.

Frequency of Contact

Do the standards of commitment in women's best friendships require more frequent association than friendships based on shared sociability or exchanges of services? My data suggest they do. The close friendships I learned about were extremely active. A majority of the women I spoke to saw their closest friend at least a few times

a week. Even those with best friends who lived out of town frequently visited with them at least once each week. Of the thirteen women whose best friends lived in the same town, six saw their friend nearly every day (two of them at work), and five saw their friend two to four times a week. Women who had part-time jobs or who did not work outside the home dominated the former group of most frequent visitors; those with full-time jobs dominated the latter.

Friends also frequently phoned each other. All but one of the women whose closest friends were local spoke to each other at least a few times a week. Five of the thirteen spoke to their closest friend nearly every day. Even the women whose closest friends lived out of town spoke frequently by phone. All but two spoke at least once each week. And these two, whose closest friends lived at a considerable distance, phoned their friends every few months. Because the central medium of exchange between best friends is talk, for women in particular the phone company's advertisements may be correct—telephoning may be nearly as good as being there. Given the effectiveness of telephone communication for the constitutive exchanges of women's close friendships, close women friends should be considered to sustain an enormous rate of binding association.

The women I interviewed, especially those who were not employed full-time, frequently visited with and telephoned others in their close network as well. Immediate kin—parents, grown children, sisters and brothers (and their spouses)—were predominant among the kin women felt closest to and frequently contacted.^[38] Friends in this category had been friends for at least a few years.

Frequent face-to-face contact with close network members was pervasive among the women I interviewed, even though they did not see all their friends often. Nineteen of the twenty-one women saw at least one close friend or relative once a week. A majority saw at least three close friends or kin each week. The two who did not often see close friends or kin were both in the first year of living-together relationships: one was new to the region she lived in and was very attached to faraway friends and kin; the other had retreated from an active friendship network of many close friends when she entered a love relationship. All but one of the women also phoned members of their close networks; a majority had four or more close associates they called at least once each week. The

sizes and compositions of their friendship networks varied. By far most, however, had someone close—at least a few woman friends or relatives—whom they often visited and telephoned and at least a few others whom they visited less frequently but telephoned often.

Women regularly drove an hour or two to visit kin and close friends, often couples who had moved away. Traveling to visit close friends is a family activity that takes place during "family time," such as weekends or vacations. Social norms favoring contact with immediate kin seem to make it easier to use family time to visit a woman's relatives than her exclusive friends. Thus more "elective" close friends selected for routine visiting tend to be those both husband and wife feel close to. Women visited less regularly with distant women friends who were not such couple friends, even those who lived at comparable distances. Women often offered husbands' hesitations as explanations for why intense high school or college friendships had faded once either friend married and moved away.

Network scholars remind us that quantities of friends and rates of contact do not necessarily indicate social support. Conflict and stress also circulate through social networks within the same relationships that exchange support.^[39] Similarly, frequency of association can be meaningful only when we also consider the content of the exchange. I have suggested that much of the fundamental exchange between women best friends takes place by telephone; so in figuring rate of association we must weight phone contact as nearly equal to personal contact. I would not, however, advise this equation in friendships that have other standards of commitment. If men's friendships use solidifying exchanges like joint activity and help in tasks, telephone contact would not substitute for them. Indeed, men do not appear to use the telephone as a medium of friendship. Lillian Rubin, for example, vividly describes her male respondents' aversion to telephone conversation and their bafflement at wives' opposite inclinations.^[40]

Configurations of Association

Women see some of their close network in the company of others, some alone. Close kin often convene in groups, so the group configuration is more typical of relationships with kin. Best friends, on

the other hand, are more likely to visit independently of others. Although best friendships are embedded in larger networks of friends, much that is crucial to the friendship takes place in pairs of friends. This pattern appears to hold as well for best friends who are sisters, even though they meet in group contexts more often than unrelated friends do. Mothers, however, frequently have their young children with them when they meet, and the dynamics of these visits are clearly more of groups than pairs.

Close friends also get together as couples, that is, with their husbands. Over three-quarters of the married women saw some of their larger close network in this socializing; some were introduced by husbands. Although best friends rarely became acquainted through their husbands, about half later associated as couples. Nine of the fifteen women who socialized in couples got together with their best friends and the husbands. Women see virtually all the men in their close network in groups or couples. The most intimate exchanges among friends take place among pairs of women friends, but these conversations may well be private moments taken aside in gatherings of kin or couples.

I never asked why women incorporated best friends into socializing as couples, but some of the reasons seem apparent. This socializing opens new activities and time periods to women friends. Since nearly all the married women save evenings and weekends for husband and family, socializing in couples admits women friends into these leisure hours. Because mothers, particularly poorer ones, are likely to hire babysitters only for special evening activities, socializing with couples offers some women their only chance to be with best friends without their children present.

Nancy liked the familial sense of integrating her close friends with her family: "We're very family oriented, and I really enjoy friendships among families." Louise found that successfully introducing her husband into the friendship made Gary less jealous of her friendship with Jan. "I try to involve him in the friendship a little, so that he doesn't feel left out. We've started doing things as couples. He found out they were O.K. people and he's been around Jan enough to like her. Before, he didn't even want to meet her." Louise was also thrilled to be socializing with people she really liked. She had been unenthusiastic when the couples were all Gary's friends and their wives. Arlene expressed similar relief: "When we finally became friends as a couple [with Les and Rich-

ard], it was the first time in years we'd found a couple we both liked to socialize with."

Looking at all the couples with whom women and their husbands socialized, I noted that both spouses successfully inducted friends. In the aggregate, husbands had introduced more friends; but their majority in my sample was slim. Other studies show a greater skew favoring husbands.^[41] Even in my sample, the apparent parity between husbands and wives may mask a disparity privileging men if wives are correct in judging that husbands have smaller and more kin-dominated close networks.^[42] These husbands then were considerably more successful at recruiting—that is, they incorporated a larger portion of their close networks into socializing as couples.

Mothers Are More Constrained

In the customary realm of close friendship, we can easily see the impact on friendship patterns of higher commitments to marriage, family, and work. The Northern California Community Study shows that marriage and parenthood constrain friendship patterns of women more than men. Mothers of young children have fewer friends and are especially likely to be socially isolated.^[43] In the last chapter, I summarized the more obvious impediments to sociability for young mothers and cited my respondents' testimony of their felt need for friendship. Here, I look at some subtler ways that responsibility for young children influences patterns in friendship.

Although few best friends met through husbands, many met through children. Best friends with young children were particularly similar in life-cycle stage. When women emphasized common values as an important basis for friendship, childrearing values were those they most often specified. And although closest friends tended to socialize in pairs, those with young children generally conducted their friendships in the presence of children.

Several reasons explain why close friendships so frequently began through children. One is the importance to women of confidantes who share the experience of mothering (see chapter 2). Child-centered activities are excellent places to meet other mothers. Even simpler is the fact that children are participants in friendships. Women visit their friends in the company of children, so meeting friends through children allows women to judge how

these crowded friendships will work out. Sylvia, whose children are all under six, saw this distinction between men's and women's friendships as the fundamental gender difference in friendship. "Men's friendships are men only. They can go out to the club, play cards, whatever. When women go out, they have their kids along. That affects what they do and where they go."

That friendships among best friends are ideally autonomous and dyadic, yet practiced in the company of children, has much effect on friendships. If the children do not get along, there is no peaceful terrain for the friendship. In child-centered contexts, a mother can note how the children fare together and assess the possibilities of peaceful association with another mother. Differing values and styles of childrearing frequently attend these friendships. When mothers talked about "common values" as important bonds among friends, they most frequently stressed childrearing values. Their reasons for this emphasis were largely instrumental, as the following examples should make clear.

Kay and Linda met in a class on child development at the community college. They were attracted to each other's ideas about childrearing. Kay said: "I could see when she answered questions the teacher brought up, that she feels the same way I do about things." Their friendship developed slowly, finally blossoming over a summer of afternoons spent minding the children and talking. According to Kay: "Just last summer we started doing things with the kids, and we got along real well. Sometimes we get them all together outside and just come inside and play cards and talk. We have the same perverse outlook with kids. We joke around about them, just to get through the day." Kay and Linda, along with their youngsters, saw each other nearly every day, even though Linda had a part-time job.

Things just jell when we're together. We can tell each other's kids to "knock it off," or whatever. You know, with some people, anything goes with their kids. Maybe they don't have a bedtime, or maybe they don't have to mind. That just causes dissension with your own kids. With Linda, I'm at ease with her and the kids. We think alike in all the important areas.

Kay had become close to another friend, Trish, before Kay's children were born. Kay perceived Trish as her "absolute opposite" in

every way and, most problematically, in childrearing style. "I don't disapprove that she does things differently. But we can't 'blend' our differences in the house. If she doesn't put her kids to bed at a regular time, that's fine. But she used to come over at my kids' naptime or bedtime and wake up my kids to play with hers. And that used to drive me nuts!" Kay said "used to" because she tried to visit less often with Trish, whom she still listed among those she felt closest to. Kay befriended her "disorganized" friend for years, defending Trish to other friends and to her own disapproving husband. She felt surprised at how "blending" childrearing styles disrupted a rapport that withstood a great deal of personal differences in values and style. "It's hard to explain how important these small differences are. Her kids can walk around the house with a bag of cookies, eating as much as they want. My kids think they've died and gone to heaven. It always causes tension in my stomach. If I try to deal with my kids, they'll be crying. Linda and I don't have any of this."

Kay's relationship with another, newer friend, whom she liked a lot, did not develop very far because of childrearing differences. "We believe in a lot of discipline and they don't. It's funny how little differences add up, though. I can't wait till the kids get older and those things aren't such a problem."

Sylvia pursued her friendship with Pat in spite of considerable childrearing differences mostly, it seems, because their husbands—close business associates—encouraged their connection. Yet Sylvia complained:

I'm often really disappointed when our childrearing differences come up. They're not as strict with their children. For example, our children have to ask before they leave the yard. Last week, [my daughter] Cathy came in crying because Pat's kids left her behind before she could ask permission to go. Then Pat made matters worse by telling her to "shut up."

I felt very angry, but that's the way she raises her kids. It's irritating to her when the kids cry. Whereas her children irritate me when they're outspoken or disrespectful. I just try to rationalize it out so it won't affect the friendship.

But it does affect the friendship. Sylvia frequently noted differences in childrearing values and styles that impeded the development of ease and trust in her friendship with Pat.

Mothers are constrained in their friendship choices in many ways. It is not just that primary responsibilities for home and children—and, job responsibilities as well—leave little time and energy for socializing in friendship or that women who are home with young children frequently have no easy access to transportation. Mothers who have day-long charge of children bring a third (and a fourth and a fifth) participant to friendships that, in other circumstances, are contracted between two friends alone. Mothers must construct an intimate relationship in a collective context.

Friendships may be personal and private and relatively free of procedural rules and rituals, but they are not endlessly varying free relationships. In charting the essential practices of best friendship, surveying the normative realm, and noting residual and customary uniformities, we note the ordering influence of marriage, family, and work. Family commitments shape constellations of values and practices in friendship. Marital status and stage of childrearing become salient characteristics for recruiting friends. Among desirable subjects of conversation are those dimensions of wifehood and motherhood that women friends protect from devaluation, if only by mutually acknowledging their interest in them. Among moral obligations between friends, ultimate responsibility for each other's children figures prominently. The companionate values of self-disclosure, intimacy, and empathy that women find distinctive to friendship rather than marriage become friendship's standards of commitment. Contemporary close friendship thus responds to needs engendered in the nuclear family, incorporated in a companionate marriage ideal, but not fully satisfied in marital love and companionship.

It is easy to imagine that changing family patterns could shift or change the core of friendship's standards of commitment. New patterns of moral discourse, sociability, or conflict among friends might respond to changes in marital power or division of labor. Under some circumstances, friendship patterns might develop more autonomously of marriage and family commitments. At present, however, despite the very personal and private character of close friendship, it remains in the orbit of family commitments.